The only time I’ll ever mention these two ghastly words…
After the ‘pay what you want’ release of Radiohead’s new album a month ago, I think we all new that before long there would be other major bands jumping on board to make themselves seem ‘cutting edge’. Still, I didn’t actually think it’d be this soon.
Yes, for the purposes of this post I’ll have to mention the words ‘Cliff’ and ‘Richard’ in one sentence. The reason for this is, as I’m sure you’ve heard by now, the news that Cliff Richard will release his new album on the Internet, allowing fans to ‘control’ the album’s price. I put particular emphasis on the word control because it must be noted that ol’ Cliff doesn’t appear to have the balls that Radiohead had. You see, rather than allowing download customers to choose any price they want, his record is being sold in a very similar fashion to the way things are sold on those crappy shopping channels. Quite appropriate, really, as the CDs sold on those channels are generally 35 CD box-sets of ‘country classics’ of similar quality to Cliff’s albums.
Another fantastic point made on this blog is that Cliff Richard’s main fan base are probably still not capable of using the Internet. Rather than making the godly singer seem all hip and cool, this move just appears to have humiliated him in front of the world’s media.
Whatever people think of the move, I shall be very interested to see if there is “sufficient demand” to bring the album’s price down to £3.99, as is proposed. If there isn’t, it may just add to the old man’s embarrassment!
