When Radiohead announced that fans could pay whatever they wanted for new album In Rainbows, it was meant to show that a band could trust its fans to acknowledge all the work that goes into an album's creation and pay accordingly.
Yeah, hasn't happened. Of all the people who downloaded In Rainbows last month, less than half of them actually paid anything at all for it, it's been revealed. According to researchers ComScore, only about 40% of people who downloaded In Rainbows by Radiohead decided that paying money to hear it was a good idea, spending an average sum of just $2.26 for it. Although this could be seen as a disastrous embarrassment for Radiohead, the band shouldn't get too downhearted – after all, most bands would struggle to charge $2.26 for a bunch of songs that sound like a bunch of Broken Social Scene B-sides in the first place.
For a band whose music sounds like a ghost trying to fix a broken robot, Radiohead really captured the public's imagination with its new album In Rainbows. After the thrill of releasing traditionally-distributed albums made entirely out of nothing but whirs and clicks wore off, Radiohead announced that it would instead release an album of actual songs on the internet, letting fans pay whatever they wanted for it.
The idea caught on fast. With the music industry in crisis, perhaps this was really the future – trusting fans to pay a reasonable amount of money for the fruits of a tortuous 20-month recording process. After all, everyone who likes Radiohead must be sensible and intelligent, otherwise they'd never be able to decode Thom Yorke's witchy yowl, so they'd stump up an appropriate wedge, surely.
The signs looked good at first – on the first day of release so many people downloaded In Rainbows that Radiohead's website broke and the feeling that this was the future of music was such that even dear old Cliff Richard adopted the Radiohead model. Looking back, all the crowing might have been a little bit premature, because it turns out that no bugger actually paid for the sodding thing.
ComScore revealed yesterday that, of the 1.2 million people who visited Radiohead's website since In Rainbows was made available to download, 62% of customers chose not to pay a penny for it, with the majority of the others only spending a minimal amount. In fact, accounting for both paid and unpaid downloads, Radiohead only made $2.26 for each copy of In Rainbows downloaded. In perspective, for the latest album by one of the world's biggest bands, people paid less than half of what Amazon is currently charging for a bargain-bin collection of choral Elvis Presley arrangements. But who doesn't love Elvis, huh?
Of course, you could argue that that's still $2,712,000 that Radiohead earnt from In Rainbows – and it all belongs to the band now that none of it goes to a record label – plus the band has made double that from pre-orders of the physical deluxe In Rainbows box-set, and In Rainbows is still to be released traditionally on CD, and Radiohead is likely to overcharge for concert tickets because of the innovative way it all but gave the album away. So the band hasn't done badly out of this.
It hasn't done badly, but it could have been an awful lot better, too – something that Radiohead plans to explore on its next album, How Are We Supposed To Buy That Fleet Of Diamond-Studded Speedboats Now, You Tossers.
Leigh O'Gorman says
Strange that, because many official sources have stated that the zip file has averaged around 4 Pounds Sterling (around 7/8 Dollars) and that around one-third downloaded it for free. In the first week alone, there were reportedly 385,000 downloads of the file.
Sweet,
– Leigh
Christopher says
I just read 3 of 5 paid for it and the average price paid was 2.50 (USD)- 3.00. The article also quoted a representative of the band as stating that that was roughly what they would’ve gotten from a record label ANYWAY. (who would’ve kept ALL the rest of the money for themselves).
In the end, they supposedly ran away with about 2.5M (USD).
That’s the sort of complete failure I’D like to be!
Hi5 Codes says
Nobody pays for CDs now anyways… why pay when you can download for free =/?
Leigh O'Gorman says
knowing radiohead, probably some sort of social experiment
lots and lots of labels work to this business model already, but they tend to put a minimum-cap of something like 3 Pound Sterling (5/6 Dollars I think…)
The CD is being released through XL in March, so it’ll be interesting to see how many sales that makes.
Lastly though, I think the quotation in the article is sample set – only Radiohead and their management really know the exact figures of how much money they just scored
:)
– Leigh
tracey says
I wonder how much other band’s fans would have paid for an album if told it was up to them.
Steven says
They are not in this for money! Radiohead just wants to play music, thats why they left their producers. They don’t care how much you pay, just how much you enjoy the music!