Slashdot Mirror
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
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
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.