Radiohead Has Its Cake and Eats It Too... Maybe
In October, Radiohead released their new album, In Rainbows, as an online download with a name-your-own pricing scheme -- you only paid if you wanted to, and only as much as you thought the album was worth. Our unscientific poll showed that a majority of ReadWriteWeb readers thought that downloadable albums were worth between $5-14 -- though we framed the question such that we can't make any determinations about how many people would actually be willing to pay that much.
And we really don't know how many people purchased In Rainbows online. comScore said just 38% of downloaders paid for the CD, most below $4, while Radiohead disputes those numbers -- but won't release any of their own. Writing in October, Richard MacManus predicted that it would be the physical CD that would be the true money maker for the band. It looks like he was right.
"According to our poll US$5-9 is the most popular price range that people are willing to pay for the digital download version. That pricing will be virtually all profit to Radiohead, so the download version will make some money for the band," he wrote. "However the eventual single CD release will reach a much wider audience, so the physical CD will end up being the pot of gold at the end of In Rainbows."
The latest UK album charts have In Rainbows sitting pretty at #1. Because the Internet download version is no longer available, it is clear that Radiohead's main goal for the gimmick was to promote the planned CD release of their album. It would appear they were successful in that regard, but appearances can be deceiving. To be fair, it is way too early to tell what effect the In Rainbows online promotion had on the band's CD sales, so what follows is purely hypothetical.
It was certainly not hard for Richard to predict that a CD release for Radiohead would be a "pot of gold." The band's last 4 albums have reached #1 in the UK, and none of the bands albums have thus far failed to go platinum there. Even in the US, where the band's popularity has cooled since the late 90s, a gold record is nearly guaranteed for Radiohead. So Internet promotion or no, a hot selling CD was in the cards for Thom Yorke and company.
What we don't know yet, is how In Rainbows CD sales will compare with the band's past albums. Could it be that by offering essentially a prerelease of the album online, the band cannibalized future CD sales? Did the eventual cancellation of the download promotion and release of a traditional CD alienate early-adopters and cause them not to want to buy the album? Or did instead the Internet release merely attract casual fans who would not likely have purchase the CD anyway? These are all interesting questions, but it is still to early to form any definitive conclusions from Radiohead's experiment.
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Radiohead successfully circumvented a leaking of their new material by releasing it themselves at the earliest possible time, people paid what they wanted (between 0 and thousands of dollars allegedly) and now as the article makes its mistake in the following. The website where we could get the beautiful boxset (i got one, worth every penny) is displaying art, you can no longer PAY to download it, the album and the second disk is available to all _normal_ internet users for free off bittorrent.
I personally believe this was the best way to release an album I have ever heard of, TOOL released their last album and were very careful not to let it be leaked, but one could download it around 10 days before release as the staff at the place PRINTING the cd leaked copies out.
I don't believe that selling the cd over the internet promoted it so much, only old fans would actually be interested and pay, since you can get it for free from the internet anyway, and there are many many people who will still buy the regular cd at record stores who haven't heard of the internet pay-what-you-want thing at all.
bad article, wrong point of view. Radiohead are trying to make the best of the brave new world of recording artists and working for the fans, rather than punishing fans as the record companies would have it in their litigative money is everything world.
Posted by: ALEX | January 8, 2008 4:11 PM
Maybe the story is that the digital sales did as well as they did, though not as good as CD sales...right now. Not bad considering the world has been trained to buy via CD. Radiohead is pioneering a new model, which always is the hardest part.
Posted by: Don Jones | January 8, 2008 4:27 PM
In the states, the CD is priced very favorably. You can but it on Amazon for $7.99. It doesn't hurt that this is one of the best CDs from one of the greatest bands ever.
Posted by: magnusdopus | January 8, 2008 4:36 PM
It seems like the recent Trent Reznor experiment, but with a more secure way. Primarily using word-of-mouth and when the public pays the necessary attention, going 'traditional'.
Posted by: robojiannis | January 8, 2008 4:36 PM
I think that you might be missing the point. It is too early to go all digital, but it is coming. What Radiohead, or NIN, is doing is to see where the rubber meets the road, how things go. It is more of an "in your face" and a "I told you so" to the music industry.
Posted by: Fabian Schonholz | January 8, 2008 5:19 PM
The album is also on iTunes now too so it is still available in digital form. At least on iTunes people will be able to buy it easily, it took me lots of attempts over several days to purchase In Rainbows from the original download site!
Posted by: Rick Curran | January 9, 2008 1:31 AM