November 7th, 2007
Radiohead’s In Rainbows - The real price
According to an article in the Guardian today, the real price - after all the publicity and hoo haa has died down - paid by the average punter for Radiohead’s In Rainbows is a measly £2.90stg. Apparently just over a third of fans stumped up for the album, while the other two thirds didn’t bother coughing up at all. Fans indeed.
Now that’s considerably less than you’d pay for an album in a shop, let alone via legitimate digital download. The band have retained their autonomy, done things their own way, called the shots, yada yada, but was it a good idea to ask people to pay what they wanted? Radiohead have some of the most die hard fans going, surely a set nominal fee, save a fiver, would have been the way to go?
In commercial terms, these are strange times for music. Why else would a record company agree to let Scarlett Johansson *shudders* release an album of Tom Waits covers?
November 7th, 2007 at 10:43 am
Hardly a surprise, is it? Give people the choice between something for free and paying for it and the majority will always choose free.
On the other hand it probably got downloaded a lot more because it was free. Even a fiver would have put lots of people off.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:54 am
But that’s my point Twenty - does this mean that every band might as well put every album they make on the web for free because people are going to download it anyway?
And if you’re a fan and want to support a band, why shouldn’t you stump up something for something they’ve spent months grafting on?
November 7th, 2007 at 10:58 am
It was a good idea, but badly executed in many ways. For example, the site was a usability nightmare, and it didn’t allow you to pay after you’ve heard the album. If you’re asking people to pay what you think it’s worth, and they haven’t heard a single song of it yet, how could they value it? They should have followed up with an email to everyone who downloaded the album a week later, with a “pay now” button. There is so much more they could have gained out of this with a bit more creativity.
November 7th, 2007 at 11:33 am
It doesn’t matter how much people paid - this was a marketing excercise and it worked wonders for Radiohead.
It put the band firnly in the limelight without them having to do any interviews, gigs or promotional activities. Just a press release.
It has done all the advance set-up work for the forthcoming CD release. (Interestingly, no-one has the figures for how many box-sets they sold, which was the real cash cow in this experiment).
It has allowed them to be seen as innovative and cutting edge.
Radiohead - the Marketeers of the Year.
BTW has anyone mentioned that the album is poxy? No?
November 7th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Yikes, £2.90 was the average? Considering people (like myself) stumped up the 40 quid sterling for it that’s lower than I thought.
However, the thing that’s missing is how many people downloaded it by the authentic method. If it’s £2.90 times a million, minus the minimal costs of selling it (without a label, marketing company, distributors and shops fees) it still amounts to a tidy profit for Thom and co.
The thing is that while this was big news it remains to be seen if this is the direction music sales will go - there’s few bands with the clout radiohead have to pull off such a stunt.
November 7th, 2007 at 11:52 am
James, I agree - much more could have been made of it although getting people to pay a week later would be some feat.
Jim, it still looks like they’ve missed out on a lot more cash. I know everyone’s raving about the publicity and cleverness of the whole venture, but with a little more thought, they could have engineered it so that people DID pay a few quid.
And yes, it’s a pretty average album. Can’t get over the 5 star reviews dotted around the place.
Joe, 40 sterling? It’d better be a bells-and-whistles boxset for that.
Few bands could pull this off, but I’m positive Radiohead could have convinced people to pay more.
November 7th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
Yeah it was an impulse moment, it comes on CD vinyl, books bells, whistles and go faster stripes I believe.
Few more tracks that aren’t on the album. And yes it wasn’t quite the 5 star masterpiece it’s been touted as, but it’s solid all the same.
That said I will still appraoch those extra tracks with caution. In the sarcastic words of Troy McLure ‘If this is what they took out what they leave in must be gold!’
November 7th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
And if you’re a fan and want to support a band, why shouldn’t you stump up something for something they’ve spent months grafting on?
Do you get the same hardcore fans that you used to get though?
Just thinking back where you had people that were into the Smiths or the Cure or whoever with such a passion that they’d give their last penny to buy a dodgy bootleg of some crap gig recorded on a dictaphone off that bloke on O’Connell Bridge.
Maybe it’s easy access to so much music but it doesn’t strike me that people are as ‘into’ one band as they used to be. So it’s easier to justify downloading it for nothing.
November 7th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Given the minimal costs involved in selling it anyway, would it suggest that the collective fanbase recognised that a band gets a relatively low mount from any album sale anyway, and that £2.90 is about right for the band’s cut?
November 7th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Ah now. “Real price”. Could we get the real price of all other music if we include all the downloads of those as well. I think we’ll see that over time the “real price” of all music will tend to zero anyway. Radiohead gave the option to set pricing and hell they might as well let the ones who’ll pirate them just get it from the source anyway. A band has finally marketed to both the buying fans and the stealing fans.
Also, just a point but the Guardian article is based on Comscore guesses, not actual server stats. I’d like to see what stats Radiohead will release on this and also stats on boxset sales. I’d like to see how many paid downloads there actually were and compare it to sales of previous radiohead releases in the same timeframe. Til then it’s spinning numbers to talk up or down the band.
There’s new markets for music now. There’s free, cheap and luxury markets for the same product and you can cater to all and make money from all in my view. Sales for all bands are going down thanks to the [buzzword alert] “long tail” trends but we’ve never had so much variety ever.
November 7th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Not a fan of Radiohead (bar a couple of songs)…
Saul Williams gave people a choice of spending nothing (MP3 quality would be lame though) or a measly $5 (much better MP3 quality)…
I spent the $5 for Saul because his music is worth the asking price.
November 7th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
I can’t even be sure where I heard this but I think they did actually sell more than 1.5million downloads. If most of that cash is going directly to the band I don’t think they did too badly out of it. Or is my maths really appalling?
November 7th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
It’s hard to tell where the music biz is going. Very few bands ever made any real money from record sales.Touring is where the band profits are. Most likely recorded music will become free or very very cheap, as distribution over the web is essentially free, many bands will own their own studios, so the costs to the band are minimal. Audiophiles will pay for a better format, most likely vinyl, (sales have increased dramatically). A band like Radiohead can use an album release as marketing, keep all the money themselves and use this to fund a tour, (again cutting out the middle man),and reap the benefits accordingly.
I wonder what the long term sales will be like. I think many people impulse buy, I often browse itunes or my local used CD store without a specific desire. As Radio head has cut out the stores and itunes they have effectively eliminated the casual buyer.
This is all bad for new bands, they need record companies to get distribution and more importantly publicity. Many are now being forced to sign contracts where they have to give up a portion of future royalty, merchandising and touring profits.
Although not a huge Radiohead fan, I think it’s a great album, not 5 stars but defo 4.
November 7th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
[Ahem cough cough] sexist comment of the day…
Scarlett Johansson can cover me any day…..
I thank you……
November 7th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
As everyone now knows, the internet is the Devil, and if you get into bed with the devil, chances are you’re going to get fucked.
However, what music fan on the planet doesn’t know that radiohead have a new album out now and will probably buy it in HMV on a whim?
Radiohead win.
November 9th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
Only Radiohead album I’ve bought (or listened to). Don’t regret the purchase (4.00 sterling). Will buy the CD when it comes out.
You think Scarlet Complicated-surname-to-spell releasing a recording of Tom Waits covers shows the music industry is in a funny place at the mo???? The same music industry that recorded William Shatner singing Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and Leonard Nimoy singing about a hobbit???????
November 10th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
I ordered the Discbox, hoping the album would be good enough to justify the €58 but after downloading it and listening to it for a week or two I actually cancelled my order, because I was pretty dsiappointed with it. (That didn’t stop me spending €45 on the new Mark Kozelek 4 LP White vinyl set instead though, which I bought with the money I ’saved’ - I’m such an easy sell!)
November 12th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Do you think the band will make more than £2.90 per CD purchased on the high street when it’s released there?
I imagine the boxset has been a big seller aswell, and the lack of middle men in its distribution/sale needs to be factored in also.