Music Mag Apes Radiohead's Pricing Scheme

Paste magazine is taking a page from Radiohead, asking readers how much, or little, they think it's worth. For the next two weeks, anyone who buys or renews a subscription to the indie music magazine through Pastemagazine.com can name his or her own price. Clever, clever.

Unlike Radiohead, which gave fans the option of paying nothing at all for In Rainbows, Paste has set a minimum of $1.

"We need to count these as paid subscribers," explains publisher Tim Regan-Porter (via email, even though he's down here at the American Magazine Conference, somewhere.) "That's our business model. So there needs to be a minimum. One dollar seemed a reasonable minimum
and it at least covers what we'll pay MC/Visa to run the order."

Besides, he notes, paying nothing for In Rainbows wasn't really an option: "You could enter zero but they charged you 49 pence for processing. We aren't charging processing fees, so it's equivalent."

And Paste also threw in an extra wrinkle that would have driven Radiohead fans into ecstasies: Readers who choose to pay more than $19.95 for a year will be thanked in print in an upcoming issue.