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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).
Who the fuck is radiohead?
A few years ago, while browsing around the library downtown, I
had to take a piss. As I entered the john a big beautiful all-American
football hero type, about twenty-five, came out of one of the booths.
I stood at the urinal looking at him out of the corner of my eye as he
washed his hands. He didn't once look at me. He was "straight" and
married - and in any case I was sure I wouldn't have a chance with
him.
As soon as he left I darted into the booth he'd vacated,
hoping there might be a lingering smell of shit and even a seat still
warm from his sturdy young ass. I found not only the smell but the
shit itself. He'd forgotten to flush. And what a treasure he had left
behind. Three or four beautiful specimens floated in the bowl. It
apparently had been a fairly dry, constipated shit, for all were fat,
stiff, and ruggedly textured. The real prize was a great feast of turd
- a nine inch gastrointestinal triumph as thick as a man's wrist.
I knelt before the bowl, inhaling the rich brown fragrance and
wondered if I should obey the impulse building up inside me. I'd
always been a heavy rimmer and had lapped up more than one little
clump of shit, but that had been just an inevitable part of eating ass
and not an end in itself. Of course I'd had jerk-off fantasies of
devouring great loads of it (what rimmer hasn't), but I had never done
it. Now, here I was, confronted with the most beautiful five-pound
turd I'd ever feasted my eyes on, a sausage fit to star in any fantasy
and one I knew to have been hatched from the asshole of the world's
handsomest young stud.
Why not? I plucked it from the bowl, holding it with both
hands to keep it from breaking. I lifted it to my nose. It smelled
like rich, ripe limburger (horrid, but thrilling), yet had the
consistency of cheddar. What is cheese anyway but milk turning to shit
without the benefit of a digestive tract?
I gave it a lick and found that it tasted better then it
smelled. I've found since then that shit nearly almost does.
I hesitated no longer. I shoved the fucking thing as far into
my mouth as I could get it and sucked on it like a big brown cock,
beating my meat like a madman. I wanted to completely engulf it and
bit off a large chunk, flooding my mouth with the intense, bittersweet
flavor. To my delight I found that while the water in the bowl had
chilled the outside of the turd, it was still warm inside. As I chewed
I discovered that it was filled with hard little bits of something I
soon identified as peanuts. He hadn't chewed them carefully and they'd
passed through his body virtually unchanged. I ate it greedily,
sending lump after peanutty lump sliding scratchily down my throat. My
only regret was the donor of this feast wasn't there to wash it down
with his piss.
I soon reached a terrific climax. I caught my cum in the
cupped palm of my hand and drank it down. Believe me, there is no more
delightful combination of flavors than the hot sweetness of cum with
the rich bitterness of shit.
Afterwards I was sorry that I hadn't made it last longer. But
then I realized that I still had a lot of fun in store for me. There
was still a clutch of virile turds left in the bowl. I tenderly fished
them out, rolled them into my handkerchief, and stashed them in my
briefcase. In the week to come I found all kinds of ways to eat the
shit without bolting it right down. Once eaten it's gone forever
unless you want to filch it third hand out of your own asshole. Not an
unreasonable recourse in moments of desperation or simple boredom.
I stored the turds in the refrigerator when I was not using
them but within a week they were all gone. The last one I held in my
mouth without chewing, letting it slowly dissolve. I had liquid shit
trickling down my throat for nearly four hours. I must have had six
orgasms in the process.
I often think of that lovely young guy dropping solid gold out
of his sweet, pink asshole every day, never knowing what joy it could,
and at least once did, bring to a grateful shiteater.
Now there is proof that artist do not need the record labels to make money, I hope someone in RIAA sees this and trembles as they show it to their higher ups!
To see a few of my Android apps goto: www.hartwired.com
They probably made more money off their album doing it this way than they ever would have made off the same album going through a record company. By the time you account for all the middlemen, marketing, and so forth, they might even have lost money on the album based on the level of sales, downloads, and so on.
This despite the estimates of widespread piracy of the album as well.
I'm sorry, but, if it's FREE, then it's not really PIRACY.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
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
Shouldn't it read "Radiohead have..." as they are British.
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
You can't 'pirate' something that's offered for free.
And for crying out loud, the "pirates" are saving them money by not eating up their bandwidth!
How we lay off that word now?
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
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."
Sincerely yours,
The RIAA
I doubt many record labels would have permitted them to do this.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Here's to hoping other bands get the hint and start ditching record labels.. Even though I doubt it will happen, as record labels do provide a valuable function (distribution, marketing and loss-leading acts)... So I guess I'm saying I hope some of the bigger names that can afford to, ditch their label contracts as soon as they can and force the labels to change their ways (Yes, I know this would suck for the little guy during that time, but it looks like just about the only thing that can be done to bring about change)... Not to mention the artist gets 100% pay for album sales this way... as opposed to the paltry ~5-10% they get from labels.
appleguru.org
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 ;).
Not bad earnings, considering that this means (a) the album went platinum with no marketing help from a major label, and (b) even letting consumers name their own price (and pirate the album freely), Radiohead is making better royalties than they would through a label.
Destroys both of the arguments the labels make in their own defense. Other artists would be fools not to learn from Radiohead.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
This is a first step (if true) however doesn't solve a bigger issue. Radiohead can do this because they are an established band, who became established because of the current industry infrastructure mind you. This modeal does NOTHING for an unknown band. How do you complete the bridge to the future?
What's the usual amount for Radiohead's sales?
If they successfully cut out the publisher they'd probably be getting about 30% of the sales at $15 pop or ~15 million or about 5 million back to Radiohead. So at even the lower estimate, they came out the same as if they had sold them through the normal channels or BETTER if sales were higher.
If not and downloads were about the same number as regular sales...they didn't do so hot...
But it's really hard to judge that from this article.
I thought Radiohead announced all their albums were now available for free, so I downloaded them all via torrent and kazaa. Fuck, my bad. I guess I'll have to delete them, wink wink.
I bought the album for GBP2.5 and I'm very pleased with the result. They deserve the money for distributing their music in a universal format like MP3, without any kind of DRM and directly to the listener. It's my first RadioHead album that I have bought, but I may buy more if they keep this attitude for their fans and casual listeners alike.
Overall revenue may be less but this revenue goes DIRECTLY to them and not intermediaries.
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.
This is all well and good, but it completely ignores the fact that if people are pirating music, the artists can't make any money!
-G
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
Making $6-$10 million on a new album the week it comes out is _unheard-of_ in the music biz-- especially since radiohead gets to keep most of it, if not virtually all of it. (When you buy a CD in the store for $14 less than a dollar actually goes to the artist). Also-- this album went platinum in the first week! Huge success for Radiohead.
I like the concept and I am glad Raidiohead tried this.
After looking at the royalty rates for software authors, musical artists, and other creative arts (movie,video,etc)...
The big companies / middle men are raking it in.
And the consumer is paying the bill.
The internet is leveling the playing field.
Lower cost of product, fewer hurdles to distribution, censorship by the consumer's choices (purchase y/n), variable/negoiatable pricing.
More money in being an artist.
Lower cost to consumer.
More artists can make a living being creative. (but possibly fewer mega-rich ones)
Fewer creative limits for the artist.
And the parasitic middle men can change careers.
Middle men that actually add value to the process will still exist. (but make a much more modest income)
The artist win ! The consumers win !
This is my opinion based on what little I know and understand of the rumors and lies Thanks, Randal
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.
Were any boats involved? Any rape, murder, or destruction of property? No? Then it was just "copyright infringement" or, if you will "duplication." This is not the same as "piracy" neither morally, legally, nor theoretically.
Just because some media outlet misused this word to refer to copyright infringement doesn't mean we should buy in. We are geeks, we should know better. Please stop reinforcing inappropriate connotations for this activity.
I really hope all the other musicians still under the shackles of a RIAA-affiliated label will feel positively JEALOUS of the kind of dough Radiohead is making!
While I despise greed, it might just be a very powerful force in the downfall of the labels and therefore the RIAA. Just imagine all those musicians just NOT renewing their contracts (or even trying to end their current ones) and go onto forming their own label and sell their music directly to their fans!
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
The established bands sell most of the records; if the record labels are stuck with only the unknown bands, they will make quite a bit less money.
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.
If the musicians do not sign, the contracts will be changed.
If all new group boycotted the contracts en mass, they would change, literally over night.
I am not sure why you imply radiohead is being greedy.
They let the fans pick the price. The amount of money someone makes has NOTHING to do with greed.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Well they didn't get it from me, thanks Pirate Bay.
First, it's "Nazi."
Second, "In British English, it is generally accepted that collective nouns can take either singular or plural verb forms depending on the context and the metonymic shift that it implies. For example, "the team is in the dressing room" (formal agreement) refers to the team as an ensemble, whilst "the team are fighting among themselves" (notional agreement) refers to the team as individuals." (Source)
(/me is not normally a grammar or spelling Nazi, but I enjoy correcting them when they get it even slightly wrong.)
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
Why couldn't you hire a publicist yourself? If you can find one who is familiar with music, he or she can put your band’s name and music in places where people are likely to bump into it and be intrigued. He or she can also arrange radio and television appearances, and press releases.
Promotion isn’t the exclusive province of the record companies.
I tried to go to the site several times, and got a blank page.
Is it flash or something? I use Gnash for Youtube. If a site actually wants to sell something to me, I think HTML would be safer.
Once I go to the deadairspace directly, it's a mess. I searched for download and buy, and found nothing.
Let me tell you, I definitely wanted to send the message that I wanted other artists to do this, but I wasn't prepared for the challenge that I would face to actually pay for it...
I had to view the source of the confirmation html page and search for a URL that I could then plug into my browser to complete the order...less than a stellar experience in purchasing online that's for sure...
The reason I put up with it? Because I wanted to send a message. It looks like the message was received. Yay!
production costs? I'm not sure that they couldn't have been in the multi-million dollar range. Anybody have that data so we actually have something to compare the profits to? Also, how much net profit does your average top-40 album produce? These would be a lot more useful than some random dollar ammount.
There is simply too much glass..
This is an oversimplification. How much did their producer get? Their manager? Attorneys and accountants? Other support crew? In the traditional model, the label pays these people and recoups the cost from that $6m (or however much). Now, they have to do it.
It's cut out the "intermediaries" (well, aside from the payment processing people, hosting company, bandwidth providers, et. al.), but it isn't as if they're splitting $6m between themselves.
Sony ha
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.
Actually, Piracy is a robbery committed at sea.
lead to 'cleaner Creek, abysmal numbers. The loss by the politic1kers though I have never Corporate fear the reaper core team. They disturbing. If you Similarly grisly
Who already have thing pretty good anyway
...but since I know I'm going to purchase the CD when it's out in stores, I bid 0.00 on it. Basically, I'm thinking of it as getting the demo or pre-release version for free, and since the CD's sound quality will be considerably better, I will then purchase that.
I just wish I hadn't lost my Hail to the Thief disc....
and starting up a band asap !!
Read radical news here
Are you claiming that those who don't have computers would be better off if the album was available at the stores for $15 instead?
Man puts group of people he doesn't know on a pedestal and is crushed when they didn't live up to expectation!
Defends move by exclaiming how much money he spent on a Tee-Shirt.
here:
"most ignorant people will assume that"
Fixed it.
Hey, guess what? That "ALBUM" already ahs the shit compressed out of it. You should not buy any CD until you can also get the masters!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That's surprising, considering the few times I have bought a new album they have always been $10-$12. These are fairly high-profile bands too. I've always felt that $10 seems like a fair price for any album I'd be willing to purchase in the first place.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
You play music, a lot.
You release to internet sites, you play in every po-dunk there is, you get a local name.
Which, BTW, is what you have to do to get recognized by the RIAA. Except industry created groups.
You give away some music online, you give CD's to place that the patrons might enjoy the music.
You play on street corners for change. You have a day job and put every penny into creating better 'studio' Which is damn cheap these days for everything but top end.
Maybe you could sell a piece of the band? Someone supports you for a piece of the group?
Simple solution.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
First off, the average donation is independent of the number of downloads. I would say that the average donation of the people who donated was between $5-10, not the average amount donated *total* Just because somebody downloaded it doesn't mean they donated...
"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.
But you know those startup bands that you've never heard of?
Well, there are a lot of barriers between that and being able to sell $100K of online music, never mind $5M. How will new bands become popular in the future? I think the "middlemen" will be with us for a long time. They'll adapt... they'll just take their cut from a wider range of revenues, i.e. live shows, rather than CD sales.
In the meantime, all the big names who "have made it" will drift away from the big labels. That's nothing new.
Actual pirates still kill real people, still really steal real cargo.
Trying to sow FUD about file sharing through this etymological fallacy only proves the *AA's level of desperation, and your defense of their crimes against language only proves you're a tool. "piracy" applied to file sharing is the same as a godwin: it's making a mountain out of a molehill.
You can't take the sky from me...
and watch it happen.
No links, sorry, but Radiohead also offered a big package with disks, hardcover book and vinyl - I know a DJ who bought one. There are people who want the big pretty collectable: double vinyl album / poster / design heavy liner notes / decoder ring. The great reality of the post-biz music racket is by giving away / undercharging for digital, selling vinyl, building fans and selling them tickets and beer there is more than enough money around for mid and even lower tier artists. But no money around for lawyers who decide you need 'more cowbell', are too old or that 'guitar bands are over'.
Not a big Radiohead fan but the record is interesting. Atmospheric with thick string parts and distant vocals in places. I heard it in a cafe and I'm pretty sure they don't pay ASCAP - though ASCAP does come around asking sometimes ('I am the ghost of business models past')
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
http://www.inrainbows.com/Store/index3.htm
These days you can use youtube, google, slashdot and almost anything to advertise what you are doing. I am sure anyone who would just have enough devotion can bring something to offer the same way as radiohead has now done (look for the star wreck guys for an example), thus it only depends on your imagination and courage; to achieve your dreams you just have to be clever and invent new ways to get what you want -- surely nothing works forever the same way, the world changes all the time and thus we gotta be changing. Change is a mark of being alive, being stuck means that you are dead.
I appreciate what radiohead has now done, they are showing the way. Recording industry _might_ have been a good thing for us from 50s to probably 80s, but now they are more like slowing down the development of everything else. By sueing any potential customer they might have, they actually bring their customers against them, that's certainly not the way to go. When you bury others, you bury yourself.
Everything that's alive is in constant move, things that are dead are still -- the "modern" recording industry has been stuck for many decades now. The 70s were happy years -- of course the future can bring us something happy too -- but you must not remain still, we have to always keep our eyes open for changes, because that's what happiness is all about; enjoying the little changes that are happening all around us, the beauty of every day!
Now that they're all about lolitas of the north shore and what now, someone's got the job of bringing the unknown greatness to the unknowing masses. NFL? Sure they like the new hip beats for their weekly NFL Blitz packages. Hell, Fort Minor's Remember The Name is practically an NFL theme song. And then there's video games. Lots of content to fill up, not everyone can make use of a full orchestra. In particular Madden, Forza 2, and Crackdown have pretty good and substantial sound tracks. Then there's the classic word of mouth or novelty, or both. Such is the case of Mini KISS (a KISS cover band in miniature) they were hired one year to do Grant Winstrom's (NFL Defensive End) Halloween charity party, that got them on national TV (somehow), and that got them too popular to do Winstrom's Halloween party. The bridge to the future of music is built by the missing truss of publicity. Formerly this was the domain of radio stations, but they're all caught up in media consolidation, then TV, who knows what the fuck in addition to consolidation is going on there. But now.... they play youtube clips on CNN. Everybody ready? OK GO.
Not exactly.
Radiohead was a nobody-band until the recording company EMI picked them up. EMI is a record label that scans thousands of similar garage bands, and tries to filter out the good bands from the crap bands; this costs money. Then EMI (or other record companies) takes the good potential bands, professionally records them, and markets these bands; this costs additional money (paying for transportation, per diem for food, possibly catering, renting performance space, equipment, insurance, technicans, marketing commercials for concert venues -- which means paying the media companies advertising money--, etc). In the old days, there was also the cost pressing of the disks and the physical distribution, which the 'Net has replaced somewhat.
Then it's up to the public to decide whether they agree with the record companies. Does the public buy into the band, or not? You don't hear too much about the bands that just fade away, which the record companies lost money on trying to promote; you just hear about the ones that are successful, like Radiohead.
In this way, the record company is like an investor into a start-up (the band), with no guarantee of success. A hundred bands may have failed, and the record company lost a lot of money on those; but the one success that survives those failures enables the record company to stay in business and continue investing in that successful band on future albums as well as to fund other potentially successful bands.
Radiohead's recent success is gravy from the band members' work as well as the efforts in time and money by their record labels to promote the band, a combined effort that has taken about 16 years. Therefore, Radiohead's recent success only proves that it is now at the point -- again, after sixteen years -- that it can risk cutting the umbilical cord with the record companies.
Obscure bands will probably have to try to hook up to an umbilical cord and incubate in the womb a little futher.
I wish I had a solid reference but my only information on this came from a 60 minutes episode on the subject, the Dixie Chicks and others were interviewed for the piece:
Bands make most of their money off of touring. They make some from royalties and just about squat off of albums.
Pay what you want will not be a dominant business model for making money off of albums. People will soon justify coughing up 25 cents for an album.
It could be close to model for promoting a band and getting people to where the money is.....the concerts.
Did Radio Head just prove that the record labels are no longer required for getting their music out there?
CC
I paid zero dollars for it... downloaded it free.. and glad I did, I wouldn't have spent a dime on it. The "music" was cool. Lots of good vibes, and then the vocal kicks in and the voice sounds like nails on chalkboard. I'll never go back and buy it because I've deleted it and don't plan on missing it at all. Sorry if this is harsh, I guess I'm not a Radiohead fan, but thats just how my ears hear it now... I guess 10 years ago and it would have been different. Just not sure, I guess our music taste change as we age.
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
I also tried buying the album and having problems with the website, and downloaded it. I will probably buy it on CD though, it's really good. Maybe their best yet.
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 hate to plug but ... http://www.hyfntrak.com/radiodread/fromafriend/
Radiohead - OK Computer redone in a reggae style.
Well I like it anyway
And your point is? People are still born out of wedlock, perhaps even at a higher rate than before. Does that mean that the epitaph has no meaning and shouldn't be used for that reason (I sometimes wish people thought this, but that's another issue).
There is such a thing as a non-literal meaning for a literal term. Grammar Nazi's typically don't have many Nazist beliefs, Nazi's still exist though so should we stop using that term? What about some of the other hundred words that are used to mean something different than their literal meaning, even though that literal meaning is still valid? Should we completely reformat the English language because of the travisty that people are being called pirates without wearing eyepatches and getting Scurvy?
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
Darth RIAA just felt a great shudder go through the record industry. As if thousands of A&R reps cried out at once and were suddenly silenced.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Revenue is meaningless if we don't know how much it cost them to produce, promote, and distribute the album. Unless they have substantially cut recording costs, selling In Rainbows for $5 a download probably doesn't net Radiohead any more profit than releasing it through a label.
not that there is anything wrong with that
not what a straight crowd would listen
but right up there for the gay community
i couldn't wait to download this album, paying 8 pounds for it even though i don't normally buy music. it's a vote against the record companies, and i'll vote that way again when the next band follows in radiohead's footsteps. i see two problems that may keep this from being the sea change many of us are hoping for:
1) TRUST
first, there was the www.radioheadlp7.com hoax. then, there was the strange design of the actual inrainbows.com site. i had to do some research before i was convinced that i was giving my credit card info to radiohead, and not some script kiddie in the former USSR. when every promising band starts to sell their album on their own website, how are we going to know which sites really do represent the bands, and which are worse than Sony?
2) NEWS
radiohead made BIG news by doing this, so they cashed-in on a lot of (well deserved) publicity. but the next band will not be able to count on this.
It seems like some kind of trusted distribution network may have to be developed before it's practical. If outlets like the amazon mp3 store (or maybe more journalistic sources, like pitchforkmedia.com) could work directly with the bands, for instance, this kind of thing might really fly.
(Of course, they may just replace the labels in ripping off artists and consumers.)
The music industry thinks it has it bad, wow that's rich! Think how the film processing industry is feeling about the internet and the digit revolution in general. There business is all but gone, are they complaining? No they are just getting down to the business of surviving in this new market place. Admittedly the sue your customers option isn't there, as they are doing nothing illegal, but lets be honest this approach isn't really helping the music industry anyway, is it?
The whole problem here, is that rather than accepting that the market place was changing, because of the internet, they tried desperately to cling on to obsolete business models. The results are, as they always are, disappointing on all fronts. If I was a majority shareholder in a Music label, I would go on a board of directors firing spree!!! How did they not see this coming? Their inept decisions have addicted an entire generation of their customers to free, illegal alternatives. Now over time the price of a thing should tend to its marginal cost, assuming a free market for the goods, so in terms of price for digital music, it was never looking good long term. However the potential for digital products comes from scale. If they made it easy and convenient to download music over the internet, people would buy far more music. What does it matter whether people spend £15 a month on 2 CDs or £15 a month on 150 MP3 downloads?
Now the really funny thing about all this, is that the movie and TV industries are basically following the same path as the music industry, but the markets changes are delayed, because the files are that much bigger. However in a lot of ways the Video industry is making all the same mistakes as the Music industry. They are using DRM 100% of the time, they are finding it difficult to monetise a product that is still very difficult to use due to incompatibility issues, lack of perceived value (due to the DRM again) and generally inconvenient as you usually have to install a different program for each media source. Come on guys, its not to late to pull your heads out of your a**es! There is money just waiting to be made, you just have to do it the internet way!
On a side note there is one other thing that the music industry could do to maintain the status quo, at least for a while. If they could just find a way of making the video files bigger so they take longer to download. I know, lets push High Definition!!! So maybe they do know something, but mark my words boys, your only delaying the inevitable.
Even without the recording industry, there are still costs associated with the production of the album, for example studio time and people to do post production etc. Estimating all sales as purely profit is short sighted and simplistic to say the least.
It must still be said though, even with the costs involved in making the album, that's a nice wad of cash.
Tp.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
Thank you. Given the quantity of Firefox+Linux users, this issue has to affect a decent population. Please mod parent up.
Those of us really interested in little more than a jewel-cased CD without the RIAA flavoring? I don't really want to pay $80 for the premiums of the box set (a lack of a turntable explains the majority of this), but also really like the whole CD, jewel case and booklet combo and am willing to pay for it -- name a base price for the cost of creating the physical package and let me tack on dollars as is done with the digital download. Are those of us in the middle of the road left out in the rain?
>"probably contain more content than the mp3 release"
The track listing of the later release is right there on the website, and one can pre-order a special version right now with extra artwork and whatnot. i was tempted but the price was a tad dear for a surf bum like myself. I was happy to give them 5 pounds for the download though.
You cannot pirate something you are allowed to pay nothing for.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
In a well-designed market, the two should go hand in hand.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
OK, here's some to cook your noodles:
1. What kind of exposure would an independent band get on a label-owned (read: every) network or commercial radio station? Answer: none. Radio stations are there for one purpose: to promote signed bands with airplay.
2. Given that Radiohead are an established band with a huge repertoire behind them, how much of that back catalogue do they actually own that they can pull off a similar stunt with? Answer: none. The label owns every single track. Radiohead can't even ask them for them because the label knows what they'd be wanting to do with them, which would completely cut the label out of any potential profit loop.
3. Given the associated costs of being a signed band, what would the labels' reactions be to bands upping sticks, potentially abandoning their old material and going independent and self-promoting and self-producing? I'll leave that one open to the floor.
um... crap. That's all I got right now.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
A tenner.
Remember that Southpark episode when Cartman gets that kid (Scott Tenorman) to eat his parents? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Tenorman_Must_Die
Radiohead was the band that told the kid that just ate the chili made out of his parents that he was a crybaby and totally not cool.
There.. now you know.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
They have closed shop?
Nobody else will get the album this way?
Whats done is done?
We have the final count now and no more albums will be sold? Ever!?
So that is the new halflife for the music these days - 10 days?
After that, go find a new favorite song/album/band?
Shit... I'm getting old.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
There is no record company in this case, you are buying it from Radiohead. There are costs, 49p extra is charged by the web company that covers the credit card fee, download and web costs.
The production costs are paid by the band anyway, even with a record deal, the costs are taken out of their share. So there's no difference.
I paid 9.95 GBP (+0.49), it's a good album. I might download the CD from p2p aswell at 256kbps when it shows up, or perhaps go see their next tour I'll go see them live.
For comparison, their last album sold 300,000 copies in the same period (including preorders), they got about $2 a CD (my guess based on what I know), i.e. $600,000. In other words they made a 10% of what they've likely made from this album and more people now have the album so their tours will be much bigger.
I dislike the web site itself and the physical discbox.
The site is ugly, slow, and has been up and down for the past 2 weeks. It doesn't work right in Firefox. It has unnecessary use of flash. It's not intuitive. I can't preview the songs. I have to "register" with my name and address in order to download a song. Mobile phone # is a required field. The discbox is expensive and I don't need vinyl disks. You know what would be great though? A CD! I can put it on my shelf, use it in my CD player, and it has a 44khz uncompressed audio file on it. Great huh?
Their EULA: Specifications :
The Company reserve the right to alter specifications to those stated. [WTF???]
The Customer's statutory rights will not be affected. [WTF???]
Mailing list :
By registering with the shop, w.a.s.t.e. products may use your e-mail address to send you Radiohead news, updates, ticket info etc. This is perhaps the worst-designed, jerkiest web site I've used in the last year. I'm not sure which is worse: This ordering system, or the RIAA. At least the RIAA only penalizes me if I don't buy the CD. These guys are penalizing me for actually buying it.
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.
The numbers don't actually mean anything without something to compare them to. How much money would they have made from the same number of records sold if they went through a label with the best contract they could have gotten? And would the additional press and airplay received (for this CD, because of the media attention I doubt it, but still) increased those sales?
Without knowing how improved it was over a label release, it's a bit unclear how much better they did.
They need to learn something about internet sales. There should be a one click payment like for skype. No entering of unnesecary personal details. If you make the sales process concivient and quick the customer has less chance to think twice about it.
Also most people would want to hear a couple of song first, there should be a preview of the songs
To put it simply, You're full of shit. If you REALLY wanted to support them you would have done it anyway and made the suggestion that they encode in a higher bitrate. All your doing is trying to claim you 'would buy it for the common good' but didn't because of some retarded technicality that wouldn't have affected you if you did what you claim you were going to do.
... and you play them through you $15 over amp'd speakers connected to your onboard soundcard via a frayed headphone cable
... cause you can tell a difference on your shitty ass PC sound card. /me waits to here how he has an ASUS board with tube amp onboard, monster cables feeding a harmon kardon amp with bose speakers ...
On point 1, I agree. I am annoyed at the relatively low bitrate (160 kbps = low, 128 kbps is not even worth downloading), but I paid 5 pounds to support the band and hear their new album. And I like it. But when I read they were releasing a CD in January, I wished I had not paid good money for shitty mp3s.
Second, I'd put a months pay on the line that I could encode a 320kbs mp3 and a 128kbs mp3 and play them both on your hardware and you wouldn't know the difference. I hate when people are all high and mighty about high bitrate mp3s
You're setting the bar way too low. 128 vs 320? Hah! The difference is pretty damn significant, if you've got decent ears. Now if you had said 192 vs 320, I would have been more hesitant. But I'll take you up on that 128 vs 320 bet any day, any time. However, I demand to use my own hardware, since you've been listening to music on a computer with a shitty soundcard and a frayed headphone cord.
You know the original MP3 encoders were designed so that at 128kbps most people could not tell the difference right? Yet you are one of the many people who claim 'OMG LOW BITRATE SUCKS'
Key word being MOST, here. I can tell the difference, and I'm sorry if that makes you feel inferior with your sub-par ears. But I (I am not the OP) will NOT shut the fuck up about how low bitrates suck. One of my biggest fears from digital music distribution is that high quality tracks will disappear completely, along with the CD. I still buy CDs because, as I said I CAN TELL THE FUCKING DIFFERENCE. Maybe you can't, but I've ripped at various bitrates and tested myself.
Seriously, shut the fuck up and stop acting like you were all out to buy the album but this stupid little bitrate issue is what stopped you from buying it.
Okay, so that was just a mean spewing rant, but I really hate people that talk like this and act like bitrates like this are the end of the world
The original poster didn't even seem to LIKE radiohead, so you have to take the whole post with a grain of salt. I like the band, have bought several of their previous albums. I paid for the download, and I'm giving notice: 256+ kbps in the future if you want me to pay top dollar. Downstairs, I listen to my music on a Power Mac G5 with a Texas Instruments TAS3004 sound card. My audio-out is connected to my amp/pre-amp stereo system, which is made by Audio Source (not a big name, but decent hardware without whistles and bells) and has speakers by Boston Acoustics. Upstairs, in the bedroom, I have a Klipsch ProMedia THX 2.1 computer speaker system to which I plug in my iPod, and it sounds sublime.
I want to build my own tube amp, but I don't currently have the $$. I'm a wannabe audiophile without the means to buy the fanciest equipment. It doesn't require the fanciest equipment to differentiate shit (128 kbps) from quality (256 kbps). I know people who rarely listen to music, and I know people who are perfectly satified with 128 kbps coming from tiny, tinny computer speakers. For some of us, music has a bigger place in our lives. Music to me is kind of a propulsion system that keeps me going, keeps me productive. I constantly have music running through my he
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
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
I've spent much more time at their unusable website than I would spend downloading their album via bittorrent. They have to improve their website and then, may be, the direct downloads will increase. I like their music and I'd pay my price, if: 1) no registration was needed, 2) there was an easy payment option for my country.
Total lack of faith. 10 years ago you might have been able to sell me on that, but in those 10 years after peer sharing, web distribution, and similar technologies burst on the scene, I have seen almost no visible shift away from the consolidation of the established music industry. The existing music publishing architecture represents a stable, visible sign of success for artists. Much like comic publishing and the syndicates, the stamp of approval from some group by BMG still represents the goal of success that IMO most groups strive for when they're trying to make it. They may be shooting themselves in the foot and creating nothing but badwill among their consumers, but in any age group except 20 somethings, all I've so far seen is people buying into the concept that the industry is right, and terror at being accused of being a pirate.
..but still addicted to Slashdot. Seriously, I missed this discussion because I was driving to a gig, one in a string of many out of state gigs this month in what is a grueling schedule that we've set for ourselves. I got home at 5am. After a long weekend of hard work, we might get paid enough to cover gas and expenses, if we're lucky. Half of what we make goes back to the band account to pay off our debts: the money it cost to produce our first CD, the money for our new CD, the money to buy our tour van (built in 1986), and soon, the money to hire a publicist. It occurs to us that buying our own recording gear and learning how to use it makes more sense than paying to use a studio. For what we paid to make our last 2 cd's, we could have gotten almost enough gear to do it right. But $20,000 worth of gear is a staggering figure for us. We're working so hard on the music that it interferes with my ability to make a living. (if this sounds whiny, its because it kind of is... I'm exhausted, demoralized, and a little broken). It isn't as easy as y'all make it out to be with your nice theories about business models. There's no way that Radiohead would have sold a fraction of their albums if they hadn't previously had record companies promoting the hell out of them for more than a decade. How many people here actually go out to see independent bands play? How many of you buy CD's from sources like CDBaby? There are thousands of bands in the US putting out music that is better than the Big Labels', working their asses off, and failing to make ends meet because people don't take the time to hear them. And if you do buy their CD, you will probably be dissapointed because your ears are accustomed to hearing big-budget productions, and these bands cant afford it.
There's one thing that the record companies provide that you can't typically get on your own, and that's publicity.
Yeah? You can get it from a Spammer, too.
More importantly, record companies used to serve an editorial function, and indicate a level of quality as well. If someone figures out how to incorporate (a) reliable distribution, (b) editorial judgment, (c) a way to get about 5% of what all of the bands take in as profits, and achieve (d) a little word of mouth, the Internet will beat a route to their servers. The hardest part is designing part (a) so that the operation can fully scale from the first local band you hand a Benjamin to so they try you out, to the day you drive the last of the current RIAA members into bankruptcy because every Big Talent (and little talent) and customer on the planet prefers doing business with you — no matter how fast you move from one to the other.
I'd be surprised if someone at Google isn't working on this as their side project; it's an obvious opportunity to make an honest gigabuck or two.
"Think big; win small." -- Darius Regulo, in Charles Scheffield's The Web Between the Worlds.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I heard a lot of good things related to this album:
- 'The best album after OK computer'
- 'Probably the best album of the year'
And so on. With these reviews it's hard not to want to download and (maybe) pay for it. So I don't think it's really just because of the novelty, but also because of the reviews.
Other albums from other groups will probably have very different reviews. This puts a lot of the marketing might in the hands of the review sites.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
How come I ended up paying 5 pounds 45 pence when I said I wanted to pay 5 pounds?
No matter how little the website designer got, it was too much.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
"Any artists not taking this route would have to be FUCKING INSANE to pass up millions in exchange for a recording contract that nets them very little of the actual sales."
/shipping / distributor costs.
Maybe, maybe not, it depends upon the contract; crunch the numbers. Even with the current model, it's not as much as you might think.
1.2 million / 5 members = $240,000 per person
Last album in 2003: = $240k / 4 years = $60k per year.
$60k a year isn't exactly "rock-star" salary.
Other costs:
Cost of recording / studio costs?
Cost of mastering / mixing?
Producer costs?
Disc duplication / packaging
Artwork / website / promotion / etc. costs.
And those are just costs for the album, saying nothing in regards to the costs to put on a tour and promote.
The article suggests that some of the BitTorrent downloads were due to slowdowns on the official site.
This supports what I've been saying all along - people do not pay for MUSIC, they pay for ACCESS to music. They have no problem paying $40 for a concert ticket, but they hate paying $20 for a CD they can keep (except for those merchandise freaks who love CDs simply because they're physical pieces of merchandise.)
Using P2P systems is a royal pain in the butt, until you've put it the time on one to master its intricacies.
But when the official site slowed down, people went to P2P who could.
The fact that the official site required registrations as well also would cause some people to use P2P if they already knew how.
This supports my thesis that what matters to people is ACCESS to music. They will pay to get the music they want, but they really aren't paying for the music itself. Generations who grew up with radio blaring free music all day isn't going to pay for music.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Ugh.
Lets email them and see what happens. Lousy website.
the various separate bands will have remerged back into something we know and think of as a record label. The thing is, no band is going to get as good a deal on anything as a couple of bands working together. In the UK every now and again they privatise some government run service or industry as they think they will give it more freedom and control if it looks after itself (and of course, the government make some money off the back of it). Ten years later though and the companies have brought each other up and are back where they started.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
"Radio stations are there for one purpose: to promote signed bands with airplay"
:)), winning Unearthed definitely gets bands a lot of local success.
In Australia there is a radio station run by the ABC (Federally funded TV/Radio network) called TripleJ (Wikipedia link). It broadcasts in all the state capitals and in a lot of the more populated regional areas (i.e. is available to the vast majority of the population). A large part of its mandate is to promote local bands, especially unsigned artists, although enough of the airplay time is still devoted to quality signed international acts from the US/UK/elsewhere (And by 'quality' I mean you will hear Tool, Radiohead, Ween, the Chemical Brothers, Underworld, etc, but don't hold your breath waiting to hear Britney Spears or JT) that you don't feel completely cut off from the more commercial international music scene by being a listener.
Through the Unearthed project (Wikipedia, Official site) the station has discovered a huge number of unsigned Australian artists and bands, some of whom have gone on to getting spots on nationally touring festivals like the Big Day Out and signing record contracts as a result of their exposure from being Unearthed winners (Missy Higgins and Grinspoon for example). While probably no Unearthed act has had the same success in the US as bands like Silverchair (Whose first single was recorded by TripleJ) or Crowded House (Yeah, two of the band's members are from NZ, but we like to claim them as an Australian band anyway
So yeah, don't know if you have anything like it in the US, but out here there is at least one station doing as much for unsigned artists as for signed ones.