Missing column

As a result of some — as yet unexplained glitch — yesterday’s Observer column didn’t make the leap from print to Web. If you’re interested here’s a pdf.

Who said there isn’t life after death? Hard on the heels of Radiohead’s ‘pay what you like’ experiment — in which fans were able to decide how much (or how little) they wanted to pay for the group’s latest album — comes news that Cliff Richard is also testing new online business models. He’s asking his fans to determine the price of his forthcoming meisterwerk, ‘Love, the Album’. The maximum anyone will be charged is £7.99 (the price of an album on the iTunes store) but the the final price will be determined by how popular the album is — as measured by the volume of advance orders.

Ingenious, eh? It just shows that there’s still life in these old codgers. Sir Cliff says he had no choice but to embrace new technology. ‘Who’d have thought I’d get a buzz from creative marketing?’ he told the Daily Telegraph. ‘As artists we face a stark choice. We either keep one step ahead of the technology which is changing our industry so radically – or we throw up our hands and quit. Personally I’m not for quitting.’

Right on…

Correction: The column was published on the Web edition, but in a different location. Phew!