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Radiohead May Have Made $6-$10 Million on Name-Your Cost Album
mytrip passed us a link to a Wired article indcating that if music industry estimates are correct Radiohead has made as much as $10 million on the 'In Rainbows' album so far. This despite the estimates of widespread piracy of the album as well. "[The estimate assumes] that approximately 1.2 million people downloaded the album from the site, and that the average price paid per album was $8 (we heard that number too, but also heard that a later, more accurate average was $5, which would result in $6 million in revenue instead).
The website failed and left me frustrated. I went to my bit torrent site of choice and got it there.
Then I decided it was alright but not really worth paying for.
I wonder what Radiohead thinks about all the people who tried to pay for their music, couldn't and downloaded it / got stoned instead.
Six. Million. Dollars!!
Beyond discounting the damage of piracy to RIAA partner profits, the fact a band can raise at least that much money selling their own album suggests the bar is now so low bands need not sell their souls out for a record contract.
So Madonna is considering a fat new contract with some record company, that's their mistake. She's past her use by date anyway.
I think I need to record some of my own music and see how it flies.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Does the band get to keep the entire $6M-$10M or does the label expect a large cut?
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
I would be interested to know what kind of gross they could expect from a label promotion and distribution in the "old way". The figure given here is a bit useless without that piece of information ;).
I was going to buy their box set to support them until I found that they album download was only 160 kbps. I thought that was a cheesy move so I gave it a pass and I know two other people who did as well for the same reason. So that's three boxed sets they didn't sell that I know of. Hard to extraplate from that of course, but I think if they had not dorked around with a low bitrate download, they would have done even better. Still, I'm glad that it looks like they've proved this business model and I think many more artists will follow suit.
and maybe it's due to the novelty of it.
would artists make the same sort of profits (eclipsing POS sales) if this model was more common place?
dunno
but it's a bit shortsighted to take one positive example and treat it as a working model
Well then lets hope a lot of big band ditch their labels and then fund little bands, eh?
To see a few of my Android apps goto: www.hartwired.com
True, Radiohead doesn't need to promote itself in the same way a smaller band/artist does to make money but this shows what can be done.
Imagine if half a dozen well-known bands/artists created a new music site where any music artist could join. Sell MP3s at a very low price and have a physical product at a reasonable cost where all the profit goes to the artists (less a small admin fee to help run the site).
Allow users to rate/review songs and albums.
It would have the potential to destroy the record industry & possibly iTunes.
They probably made more money because the method of distribution was so novel that they got far more press for doing this than they would have gotten if they just released an album the old fashioned way.
Now we know the first band to do this can make money. Let's see if the 20th band to do it can after the novelty has worn off.
I didn't find the album worth paying for, however I still purchased it for ~$10 (5 pounds). I did it more so to support the idea as opposed to really enjoying the music. I found it to be great background music while doing other things, but not really worth actively listening to. Of course this is just my opinion, so please don't kill me. I'm just stating that it's worth going through the trouble of paying a few bucks just to support the idea so others will do it. Hell, if you like the idea of what they're doing, but hate their music, I still think its worth your effort to pay a few bucks just to inspire other artists to do the same. On Trent Reznor's (of Nine Inch Nails) website, he said in the future he'll be participating directly with the audience now instead of working with record labels because he's now finally free of any record contracts as well.
If you don't like the music, just look at it as making a donation to the cause of destroying the RIAA.
Question: How much money did it take to get the band's publicity to the level they enjoy now? At the risk of being the devil's advocate, is it entirely likely that they are using the publicity someone else (the labels) paid for to generate sales for this album? Perhaps we should subtract such an equivalent cost from the figures and see how much they ACTUALLY made.
My small local music scene only band is trying this as an experiment right now. The experiment started last night. We made $11 off of donations in less than 24 hours. That might not seem like a lot, but we went into this figuring it very well could be $0. The funny thing was, all donations so far have come from people outside of our local market. I don't know how many people have downloaded it so far because our host only updates metrics daily.
See for yourself here.
Radiohead has always been planning on releasing their CD in January. Putting out a 160 kbps crap quality version is there way to whet your appetite for the real CD, which will probably contain more content than the mp3 release and be of much better quality.
They'll have a professional organization, but no lobbyists and no power. They'll be more or less fungible--Home Managers, parallel to Road Managers. Some will even do both.
though quite often sales-jobs are commission-based, and it would suprise me a lot if that changed for publicists. the more money I make, the more money you make is often a good deal for all involved parties; though like I said, I think the power-balance here will shift away from the labels and towards the artists, so the cut (for the publicist) may shrink.
I paid $10, that went straight to the band. If it was released through a RIAA label, I would need to pay $179 if I wanted $10 to go to the band. I'm glad I could give $10 the actual producers and innovators behind the product I was purchasing without having to give the cartel $169.
you mean like cdbaby or more like Jamendo or DMusic and of course GarageBand?
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
The facts are:
1. Radiohead has been in business for, say, 21 years.
2. Radiohead signed a SIX album recording contract with EMI, that promoted the hell out of them for two decades.
3. Labels were indirectly, but substantially, responsible for changing their name from "On a Friday" to "Radiohead".
4. They recently admitted that working without a label is "both liberating and terrifying"...
Yeah, that will teach those labels! Bands that have been busting their ass for 20+ years don't need them any longer! Somehow, I don't think if I put up my album under the same conditions, that I would make daily front page at Slashdot and spend an afternoon thumbing my nose at the labels.
These guys have paid their dues, toured until exhaustion, and have worked within the system for longer than a lot of people responding here have been alive. People, please, get off of BitTorrent and just pay a nickle, or a quarter or a dollar for every song you really like on their site. At least give the rest of us without the Radiohead exposure the hope that if we earn even a fraction of their commission, we'll be ok...
"You and your third dimension."
I'm sure I'm not the only one who went to their site to buy it, and couldn't even find a link to click on!!! I kid you not, all I saw was the psychedelic colors, tried clicking on things (or rather hovering) and couldn't even get a link. They should really find some more competent people to create their site and host it (it would have paid for itself). And by the way there should be one site, not a new site for every album they make. I wasn't even sure if it was legitimate site due to the poor design and not being their main site.
It doesn't really prove that. Radiohead were already famous. They were made famous by two record labels that spotted their talent and invested lots of money in them. Radiohead are pretty fucking good, but talent doesn't always float to the top by itself. We'd probably never have heard of them had money not been spent on them to allow them to buy decent equipment and market their records.
Times have changed since Radiohead started out, but it still doesn't hurt to have a label backing you.
I have a friend in the recording industry, and he says that whenever someone wants to use some famous pop song in an advert or documentary, they nearly always have a heart attack over the amount the record company wants. Instead they usually ditch the idea and get someone to play something similar. However, in a future where the bands themselves are in charge, I think using their work for other projects will become much cheaper. It may even become feasible for amateur film-makers to get permission to use famous tracks for a minimal fee.
$6.95/mo accounts that claim they offer 1TB transfer a month are rubbish. When you start hammering the server with requests for that data, you're account is going to be suspended.
For the kind of service you'd need for a major item like the Radiohead cd, you're looking at a completely different service. With a service like Amazon S3, you're talking almost $17k to provide 1,200,000 downloads of a 100mb file.
Whilst I realize I'm going to get flamed for daring to say it:
The challenge isn't making $6m with a successful act.
The challenge is in identifying the one band in ten, if you're lucky, that'll be that successful act.
If a typical band blows a half million dollar advance on recording an album and it flops, the record company is out the advance.
To deal with this, they write contracts that mean they recoup the 9 flops from the 10th breakout.
Those contracts are perceived as screwing successful artists because they take so damn much money from them once they are successful. What the artists are conveniently ignoring is they quite happily spent the advance while they were convinced they'd be the greatest thing ever but the label knew that hadn't been proven yet.
Radiohead ditched their label and all of the costs associated. Getting a much higher chunk of revenues, $6m is likely a great profit for them and likely far better than they'd get under a traditional deal. The question is whether any of that profit will get re-invested in advances for other artists in the way it would with a label trying to grow a stable of artists rather than just one band?
The industry does a hell of a lot wrong. They're slow to react, arrogant and treat their customers like criminals. On the flip side, they do at least have a [debatably flawed] structure for developing talent... an area where Radiohead's taking all of the profits may well fall short.
I'll lay all my cards on the table, I'm a turnaround marketing consultant. I make A LOT of money showing business entities how to reformulate their images, re-purpose their delivery mechanisms, and polish their overall revenue generating vectors (god that sounds like awful marketees).
You know how I do it?
By showing them how consumers actually want to consume.
PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO LIVE THE WAY BUSINESSES WANT TO TELL THEM HOW TO LIVE!
That shit is dead. You can make more money doing it all yourself and by NOT pushing it to everyone on the planet. You don't have to lie. You don't have to falsely claim you're something your not. You don't have to INTRUDE. You don't need to buy into the A&R guys pitch.
DO NOT LET THE INDUSTRY TELL YOU YOU HAVE TO DO IT THEIR WAY! It is a lie. There are more than enough people out there who want to hear the music you make who will pay you for it. Enough who will pay for it and enable you to live comfortably.
YOU HAVE TO MAKE A CHOICE. Do I want to be a "rock star" or do I want to live by creating music. The two are not the same.
XTC was doing this shit IN THE FUCKING 80's.
I have worked with "capitalistic" businesses. I have taken their money and they have failed. I have worked with "idealistic" businesses. I have taken their money and watched them flourish utilizing the knowledge I have passed to them.
It isn't rocket science. I'll even give it away for free right here.
Don't tell people they want you, make yourself available to people who want what you have.
Most likely not; however, Radiohead grew up in a time of labels. The labels control of the market is still unbelievably strong. This will not change until people start adopting sites like you-tube or something similar as their primary source for new media content.
Essentially, everyone will continue to ask the question "Do we still need the labels?" until we have a band become successful without them. On the flip side, the lack of a successful artist without one will never remove the question of whether they are needed.
Essentially, I think the question posed is pointless. The utility of the labels is being determined now because this is the first attempt of independence by a big name. Smaller names won't get a chance until a means to discover them becomes popular.
When all else fails, try.
And? I am not a big Radiohead fan but I did buy the album to support the message that the RIAA isn't necessary and that their methods and business practices are not in the best interests of the artists or the customers. Yes, I knew that they were respected but I am mostly ambivalent towards them (though I have enjoyed the album).
Here's some interesting numbers:
... they probably made more money than they made from the labels on cd sales total across the board... or at least an equal amount.
500k Albums is Gold, 1m Albums is Platinum, 2m is Multi-Platinum (double plat, triple plat, etc), 10m is Diamond.
US Sales for Radiohead look this... Pablo Honey - Platinum 1m-2m, The Bends - Gold 500-1m, OK Computer - 2 x Platinum 2m-3m, Kid A - Platinum 1m-2m, Amnesiac - Gold 500-1m, Hail to the Thief - Gold 500k-1m... For a total of ~5.5m-10m albums sold.
If they got 3$ per album sales (they wish) they'd have made ~16.5m-30m on cd sales alone.
If people paid an average of $5-$8 per album downloaded and 1m people downloaded the album that means they made almost 1/3-1/2 of their *total previous combined album sales* in a best case scenario and that doesn't include the boxed set people could have purchased. If you use realistic numbers for what the labels were paying them on each sale and use 1.2m downloads at an average of $5/ea
The only thing the labels provide that is actually of value is getting your stuff played enough to get you to critical mass... but they rape you doing it.
Shadus
It may not he huge in raw numbers, but if poll figures are correct, In Rainbows will have the highest profit margin (for the musicians) of any album ever released.
That's where the story is here. Radiohead bypassed the record companies, gained big kudos from their fans, and look like they've made about four times as much as if it'd been released through an RIAA member.
Why would you sign with a recording company, or even iTunes again?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Being a spelling & grammar Nazi is a sign you do not poses the intelligence to contribute to the conversation
My sister does this actually, she has recorded her last 4 albums in small studios, and then sells her music through itunes and at live gigs, she isn't rich but she actually makes a decent living. After factoring in the cost of printing the cd's and recording plus putting money asside for her next recording she ends up with about $16AU pure profit left over from the cd sales. Which isn't bad at all seeming she does about 2 - 3 gigs a week and will ussually sell about 20 - 40 cd's at each gig ontop of the door fee. I am envious of her actually even though she earns much less than me she gets to spend her weeks chilling out with diffrent people writing music and playing in there gigs for fun etc.
Actually, according to Wikipedia and other sources I could find, "Hail to the Thief" never went platinum (=1,000,000 sold) in the US. It went platinum in the UK, but the bar is lower (300,000). "In Rainbows" has now sold 1.2 million in a matter of days.
Compared to the first week of Thief, Rainbows sold at least four times as many copies, and each copy of Rainbows, on average, netted Radiohead more and cost customers less.
However you slice it, this release was an unmitigated success for Radiohead, not to mention their fans.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
An artist generally makes $.07 per song on any given album. If an album were to sell a million copies the artist would have made $70,000. Given the tax bracket the artist would have probably paid close to 50% in taxes. That leads to a $35,000 income off a million copies of an album sold. Even if the tax bracket is lower you can see that the artist just didn't make much money. In the past the artist used record sales as an advertising path for their concerts. That allowed them to make up for 93% of the income off those record sales that went to the record company.
Now you consider $8.00 per album and the $6 to $10 million made and you know this was the right move for them. It opens up the world for them. It breaks the cartel set up by the recording industry and essentially issues a pink slip to all of them and any employee that promoted that decadent system to begin with. No more billionaire recording company, instead the artist gets the benefit of their artistic talents.
This is really incredible because if they have made that much money they have changed the whole structure of how music will be sold. It is a very glorious day that the recording companies are now going to be removed as the middle man. It also means that if music distribution becomes primarily done through this mechanism we'll see a major shift away from those recording taxes on everyone that buys CD blanks, etc.
Now consider this, no more lawsuits against Radiohead customers, none of their money going to the RIAA to allow them to fund lawsuits against old ladies, the disabled, and even the dead. Just amazing if other artists recognize the value of this and move to this same model. Hey, I might start buying music again.
What a wonder the internet is. All the recording industry can say is "bad internet, bad bad". But the artists can say "good internet, good good" because they can now make the money the deserve from their efforts. This is total unequivocal proof that the recording industry, the content rights holders, and their lobbyists are wrong.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
I just downloaded it 3 times. You know why? Because they are stupid enough not to setup a private tracker, offer the file with 1% of cost of bandwidth and do ordinary HTTP server download just like back in 1994. My browser crashed 3 times because of a bug in completely unrelated tab.
:)
Is there a rule that torrent should be ONLY use for piracy? Can't we get a private tracker URL which would be 100x more secure for them too? I am saying secure since even multi million companies which were founded by sole reason of conspiring p2p couldn't mess with private trackers
I have found the cause of RIAA/big record company puppet media's "It was free but still pirated" thing. People PAID for it and downloaded from Trackers since the HTTP server couldn't cope with millions of requests. That is what Wired(.com) says and I believe it is true. If my browser couldn't resume or I was a ordinary user who doesn't figure there is a chance to resume (via cookies etc), I would do the same thing too. Remember, we have already paid for it anyway.
If these numbers are true, this is a giant step in music scene. I bet the usual suspects being open to major changes will follow them.
I would love to see a multi million selling artist like Madonna shipping her own music using torrent technology and those ISP's support lines get overhelmed because they have filtered torrent traffic thinking it is for piracy only.
Ah, so I was wrong about the number. It only contains frequencies up to ~22kHz, which is sensible in light of the human auditory range I mentioned in my earlier post.
/. so much any more. Lots of people know the numbers, but too few know what they mean.
This is why I don't read
Methinks you don't know what the numbers mean in this case, either. Think about it for a second--if you were to encode a 22 kHz sine wave (nothing complicated right now) with a 44.1 kHz signal, how many points would you have per cycle? Exactly two. One for a peak, one for a trough. What does that spell? TRIANGLE WAVE. And those sound nothing like sine waves, which you probably know if you've ever played an old Nintendo game. But it's worse--the triangle wave will only resemble the sine wave in frequency if sampled at exactly the right places (peaks and troughs) but will be silent if sampled at the point that the wave is at zero amplitude. This is the problem with aliasing. This is why CDs will never sound as good as analog, regardless of the nominal frequency range. Analog frequency and bitrate are limited by the recording equipment and the medium (e.g., acetate records). Realistically, you need about eight points per cycle to represent a sine wave, meaning that CDs, with their 44 kHz sampling, only capture realistic sounds up to about 5 kHz, not 22. Above that frequency, it all starts to become electronic-sounding. And for more complicated waveforms, eight samples per cycle is still inadequate, meaning those waveforms sound "muddy."
Caveat: I am not an electronic engineer, and I don't know how aliasing appears in the frequency domain (i.e., mp3s ripped from CDs), just the time domain. But CDs use the time domain, so these limitations do apply.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar