On Screen to Online
Digital distribution has changed the way we buy music. Niall Kitson investigates what it has to offer filmmakers.

On 10th October 2007, the history of the internet and popular culture in general took another turn with the release of Radiohead’s album In Rainbows. What set the Oxford quintet’s opus apart from everything else released last year was not so much the off-kilter melodies and soundscapes, but rather how the work was released to its salivating fanbase. For the first time a mainstream act was putting their material available exclusively for download, and it could be every bit as expensive, or as cheap, as you wanted it to be.

Did the experiment work? Did it heck! By the end of October In Rainbows managed a staggering 1.2 million downloads (with many more estimated to have been acquired illegally through file-sharing sites). With bids ranging from over $200 to sweet f.a. the band managed to net an impressive $2.4m, more than their entire back catalogue had gotten them via online revenue. The lesson here would appear to be two-fold: you don’t need a middle-man to handle your distribution in the Digital World and, if you trust your fanbase, they will see you right.

This is well and good for an established stadium rock act but what about smaller projects across different media, clamouring for attention in a crowded market of viral content? Even more pertinent, how can money be made from it? As clip-culture havens like YouTube move into the business of paying content partners to maintain site traffic, digital distribution of film could well be moving out of the ideological ghetto. While it’s not quite at the stage where cinema releases will be supplanted by iPod-friendly mp4 or .mov files, the idea of winning eyeballs through global word of web is not without appeal.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 122.