Warner Chappell, Radiohead’s distributor, is announcing that the band “sold” 3 million copies of In Rainbows, the album that they essentially gave away online in a pay-what-you-want scheme. The reports are that they made more on the album than they did on their previous dumpling, Hail to the Thief. Previous sales numbers were in the high hundred thousands, which makes this move particularly interesting.
The < AHREF="http://musically.com/blog/2008/10/15/exclusive-warner-chappell-reveals-radioheads-in-rainbows-pot-of-gold/">official stats show that Radiohead sold 1.75 million CDs – about $17.5 worth, given the vagaries of CD pricing – and about $499,500 worth of iTunes albums (30,000 sold in the first week plus 20K for good measure). They also sold 100,000 box sets. Clearly, they cleaned up but there are still about a million “sales” left over, not to mention countless pirated tracks floating about. One thing, however, is clear: the process can be successful with the right artist and content. By giving old Radiohead fans the opportunity to add premium content to their shopping carts while allowing folks who maybe liked OK Computer but were pretty angry about Kid A (AKA Me) to give the band another chance. Luckily In Rainbows was sufficiently good to warrant a bit of a push by word of mouth. I wonder, also, how much social networking played into organizing the fan base?
Obviously 3 million purchases, in this case, doesn’t directly translate into a multiple of 3 million dollars. Instead, thanks to the pay-what-you-want pricing you have to factor in freeloaders and the oil-rich oligarchs who could have paid Thom and his buddies $1 million for 15 Step alone. However, turning the metric from “dollars” to “sales” creates an interesting new dynamic in an entrenched industry, adding a whiff of Internet-esque metrics to what has previously been simple manufacturing play.
That digital download was a cool proof of concept, but the double vinyl, double CD box was awesome. I like having control over the bitrate of my music anyway.
And it’s 15 Step (if you’re talking about the song).
you’re right.
C’mon… KidA is Radiohead’s best for many of their fans! (AKA Me :-)
What is that cover? Is that a joke?
This isn’t sustainable though. If Radiohead does this again people won’t pay as much because this was a big publicity stunt by artists to prove they were independent in some way. Now that that’s been done, the next time an artist does this it’ll be less and less interesting each time.
Sure, some crazy fans will always pay a bunch for an album — but most people will do the same thing they’ve been doing since the late 90s – download the tracks for free, see if anything is worth buying and a small percentage of those listeners will actually buy either songs or the whole album off iTunes, on CD, etc.
cool
“…not to mention countless pirated tracks floating about.”
Can there really be pirated tracks when the tracks were initially given away? I believe the people pirating the music were essentially “opting” to pay zero. That seems fair.
the point is the music. if RH only cared about $$$, they would have resigned with another mega-label.
unlike other bands who h8 on their fans (see Metallica suing fans for DLing), RH has nothing to lose. In that sense, you are right that it takes the right band to make this happen.
But really, it just takes immeasurable talent…
http://www.boilr.net/2008/09/09/radiohead-live-in-santa-barbara-mp3/
im a big fan.
I don’t get the reference “…the oil-rich oligarchs who could have paid Thom and his buddies $1 million for 15 Step alone.”
Who care?
you were angry about Kid A?
Wait – why did this article appear on the TechCrunch RSS feed?
… I smell an economic model revolution!
I can not believe how poorly this article was written. Oil-rich oligarchs? Currency conversion cutting into their profits? An implication that this album was pirated more than others? Is there anything you got right that you didn’t directly pull from the press release Warner sent you? I’ve come to view TechCrunch “analysis” as laughable, but this is over the top awful.
I’m just appalled you didn’t like Kid A (AKA their best album). Was it so good that it pissed you off?
Don’t they only make about $.25 per album sold the traditional manner? If so they can sell a % of the offline sales online at $1 per and come out ahead.
Yah really, it was a stunt, cuz RH are just a fad…
-or-
you have no idea what you’re talking about, you’re a TC clone that is skeered of consumers not being force-fec bs and if you didn’t like Kid A you don’t really get RH anyway…
I’m a long-time Rhead fan and I payed $.45 for the downloadable version of In Rainbows….the album was so darn good, the guilt of only paying $.45 pushed me into the record store to buy it at retail price. Perhaps it’s my ongoing guilt – or the sheer brilliance of the band – that causes me to purchase additional copies.
I just wanted to note that Radiohead is one of the coolest bands alive. How many artists encourage fans to upload videos of particular songs they want a different angle on, and pay for the bandwidth their self with waste net.
Agreed Kid A was one of the best, I’m actually a bit partial to Hail to the Thief myself though. There are some sweet Flacs out there (band allowed) of their live shows and Radiohead returns perhaps the best results on Youtube for live content.
Jason
Hopefully more bands will discover this model which will pin record companies down further. Yeah it might have been a gimmick but it made people talk about the future right?
Not only did they make the album available (pay what you can). but tracks to songs were dissected and distributed for people to play with. They also had a video contest which was friggin’ brilliant!
Ground breakers and I hope they do more of it.
What you don’t like the art work?