How do you make people pay for music?

It's a much debated topic. Nowadays a vast majority of music lovers just download new music from torrents. It's fast, easy and most often is an option well before buying the actual cd even is. So what do bands do to stop or make some revenue off of this?

Two major bands to take strides in solving this dilemma were Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails. The former providing their last album for download on their site for whatever you wished to pay, including zero, and the latter setting up many different price structures including a free download, a $5 digital download, $10 double cd set, $75 deluxe edition set and even a $300 ultra deluxe limited edition package. Both had great success in these experiments, but measures like that may be best left to the bigger bands.

Saul Williams however had a good amount of success when he did almost the same, he released his cd for download at a price of either free or $5. He's sold a moderate amount more of them then his last cd, but the free version was chosen by more then four times the people. Still, much more of the funds from this venture would have gone directly to him then would have if he had printed cds and shipped them to stores.

In these times however, these attempts may have failed. People have even less money now and pirating is still just as easy. So what are the smaller bands doing to combat the inevitable illegal downloading of their music? Well, in 2007 the band Stars offered up their newly completed In Our Bedroom After The War on iTunes before there was ever a chance for it to leak. Given the option, many fans immediately paid for a copy they could listen to months before the actual cd release. As well, Cursive is planning to release their newest album on March 10th, but as of today you can pay for the right to download a copy for only $1. Every day before the day of release the price will increase a dollar, but I have a hard time believing that fans having been given the option to pay such a minimal amount now wouldn't just fork it over. And for those who don't, the band is putting the cd out with several bonus tracks, videos, and extras not available on the digital download.

Granted, every one of these will be available online for free to those who wait, but music fans have grown to have an insatiable appetite. When they hear of a new album they are interested in they quite often cannot bear to wait until the actual release date, and end up downloading a leak instead. Once their appetite has been satisfied, buying the music legally will fall by the wayside despite their constant claims that they'll eventually purchase it. So when given the choice to give the band money before they have become tired of the music, they might just accept. It sure seems like me to be an acceptable alternative to suing people who share the music online, but is it the only way? Are there better ways to get people to pay for their music? Time will tell.