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38% of Downloaders Paid For Radiohead Album
brajesh sends us to Comscore for a followup on the earlier discussion of Radiohead making $6-$10 million on their name-your-own-cost album "In Rainbows" — with the average price paid being between $5 and $8. Comscore analyzes the numbers: "During the first 29 days of October, 1.2 million people worldwide visited the 'In Rainbows' site, with a significant percentage of visitors ultimately downloading the album. The study showed that 38 percent of global downloaders of the album willingly paid to do so, with the remaining 62 percent choosing to pay nothing... Of those who were willing to pay, the largest percentage (17 percent) paid less than $4. However, a significant percentage (12 percent) were willing to pay between $8-$12, or approximately the cost to download a typical album via iTunes, and these consumers accounted for more than half (52 percent) of all sales in dollars."
did they make more or less profit than what they would have made with the standard sales method?
One thing this didn't account for was advertising. A band that big probably had a huge advertising budget in their past that they no longer had to worry about because being the first ones out of the block, they caught a bit more press on the Internet. There were probably a number of new radiohead fans that were made because of this that will come back and buy future CDs. They might have taken a hit financially, but I think the payoff is going to be bigger in the long run.
After all is said and done, how does that compare to the standard take of the band's share? Typically $1-2 per album sold right? Sounds like they made out pretty well.
at 6-10 mil this experiment work. Radiohead made more in album sales via download than they have on other albums. Plus this does not included what they will make in storefront sales.
But at the moment its a novelty having a well known band do this, many paid simply to show their support for the idea.
I wonder how much those percentages will change if this becomes the norm.
I myself didn't pay simply because the album was not to my taste.
Well, of course, it culd be that not all the users are keeping the program, they may be testing, etc... but I am counting the hits that the server register from the same address within a month... So the program has being used a month more or less....
So judging by that, music consumers have a more happy pocket than software users.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
...And with all the free publicity, EMI (their old label) has decided to cash in-- selling their back catalog on a USB drive that retails for TWICE what the CD box set costs.
That pretty much explains the music "industry" in a nutshell.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
drudgereport.com is a right-leaning website frequented by media execs
you see the very first story linked as:
"Most Fans Paid $0 for Radiohead Album..."
(breitbart is a right-leaning media outlet as well)
ps: right now being 4:15 pm, 11/06/2007
what's funny is how a pro-file sharing website, like slashdot, can spin a positive out of the numbers, and an anti-file sharing website can spin a negative
spin, spin, spin
just my two cents: radiohead probably made more money off their album with this internet tip jar concept than if they signed with a label, considering how the companies nickel and dime artists to death. actually, radiohead has some clout, so maybe that's not 100% true. but rather, an unknown band would DEFINITELY make more money with free albums and an internet tip jar than signing with a label
hopefully more and more bands will realize this, and a critical mass of hot young bands will coalesce such that one will consider doing business with the defunct music labels ever again
then the RIAA attack dogs will sue up and coming artists to sign with the music labels? (half-joking, i wouldn't put it past them)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
We'll only really know the full impact of this if/when other acts start doing it. I don't really like Radiohead, but I threw them $5 just for shaking things up in a good way. Still, it's obvious most people who bought this album were Radiohead fans. The real question is, how much further will this distribution model go if/when other major fanbases are given the same chance?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
How many people downloaded and paid for it on one machine and then decided to download it to another (at work, on a laptop in a hotel, whatever)? There are several things online I end up downloading countless times because it's easier to get it off the net than it is to keep everything on me.
yeah, you and this guy should get together and toss up a nice big FUD salad.
"It doesn't bode well for the future of the music industry," says Michael Laskow, CEO of TAXI, the world's leading independent A&R (Artist and Repertoire) company. "Radiohead has been bankrolled by their former label for the last 15 years. They've built a fan base in the millions with their label, and now they're able to cash in on that fan base with none of the income or profit going to the label this time around. That's great for the band and for fans who paid less than they would under the old school model. But at some point in the not too distant future, the music industry will run out of artists who have had major label support in helping them build a huge fan base. The question is: how will new artists be able to use this model in the future if they haven't built a fan base in the millions in the years leading up to the release of their album under the pay what you'd like model?"
This is of course horse-crap. Yes, the industry is capable of picking out just about anything with a partially intact larynx and turning it into an overnight "success", but the music world hardly needs this and will conceivably will fair much better overall without it.
ôó
I've been an avid Radiohead fan for years now, and when I saw this I was delighted someone had stepped up and realised the change in the state of the music industry. I paid 5 quid for it, and I did so to say "good idea, I'm willing to pay" and I don't regret one penny of it.
Kudos to Radiohead, and I hope those fat cats at the RIAA and related Music Labels take heed.
ilovegeorgebush
I tried to buy the album from the US, my bank declined the charges. When I called them to find out why they said a lot of fraudulent charges come from that part of the world and would not allow me to buy the album. How many of the folks who didn't pay for it actually "couldn't" pay for it?
It would appear the spread was:
$0.00 : 62%
$0.01-4 : 17%
$4.01+ : 21%
Why four bucks is some magic number to someone, who knows. If broken in to equally as arbitrary but halfway sensible thirds, I'm sure it would look something exciting like:
$00.00-00.00 : 62%
$00.01-05.00 : 12.6%
$05.01-10.00 : 12.6%
$10.01-15.00 : 12.6%
But, that would make for a terribly boring PowerPoint presentation.
I wonder what is the overlap between the percentages, I mean some people could not pay anything, decide they like the album then come back to the site and pay for the download.
\u262D = \u5350
I was willing to pay $5.00 for the album, but in the end, I just left their web site and didn't download the album. The fact that I had to register (i.e, create a username) was simply annoying. I don't mind entering my CC info and address for a one-time payment, but that is all I'm willing to do to pay for the album. Past the purchase, I don't want to have any connection to the site. Even a Paypal option would have been nice.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Yes, that could inflate the numbers of non-paying customers.
I downloaded it for $0 too, and it didn't appeal to me at all. I wish I could "un-download" it, i.e. delete it from my hard disk and decrement their "$0 downloader" count.
Here
Results to Date
70 downloads
5 donations
% of downloaders making a donation: 7%
Smallest donation: $2
Largest donation: $12
Average donation: $6.80
As a poster suggested to me in the last thread about Radiohead, I'm not going to quit my day job.
if the buy process was cleaner. It was a difficult flow that required you to create an account. If it was a simple "buy it now" kind of thing I would have paid for it too - instead I downloaded it from somewhere that didn't require me to create an account.
Record companies often SCREW the bands on contract.
Dude, producers, sound engineers, and all those folks don't all work for the record companies.
Front money? How many record company contracts have you seen? And how much does a record company actually advance on royalties for anyone but a superstar?
Marketing: yes, that's true. Of course, it's less true now than it was fifteen years ago. Fifteen years ago, there were record stores, and people actually listened to the radio. Well, they killed record stores, and nobody listens to music on the radio anymore anyway.
Record companies are only now getting into the tour bus business, because that's the only part of the industry making money. That is not traditionally what record companies do. That's what band managers do, and for most recording artists, that's still what managers do.
Top-of-the-line instruments? Dude, you mean like Nikes and stuff?
So, no, I say your understanding of the music industry clashes with mine. But you do point the way forward: out of the hands of old "CD and lawsuit" companies and into the control of groups and individuals (within the current record companies, or outside them) with influence on the market as it currently is. And, with the internet, it currently is more segmented and more regional than it's been in a long time. Radio DJs are all but irrelevant; MTV? When was the last time they showed music? And yet the record companies still insist on making $2M videos? The current arbiters of music fashion and taste are those people who've been supporting recorded music since its advent, but have never been under the control of the music industry: your buddy who makes the mix tape, the club DJ, your little hoodrat friend who's been "saving it for the scene". The "industry leading" recording studios aren't worth it for most musicians: they can get a "good enough" job done in someone's house in the Meadowlands. The "music people" and their cocaine only harmed Rock-n-Roll to begin with.
So no, the Reagan 80s were not a glory period for music. As the saying goes, I survived the 80s one time already...
Oh, I felt quite good about it. The system I worked on would have increased the amount of money paid to artists, by implementing royalty calculations for several common contract clauses that the previous system couldn't handle. Whenever the labels write a contract they can't actually implement (which is very common), they choose to approximate it with a calculation that favors them. They don't bother to tell the artist that, of course, and the only way the artist finds out is by paying a team of auditors big bucks to go through all of the records and do the calculations themselves. Even then, the label just offers a "settlement", rather than actually paying up. The settlement is calculated to be just large enough that it's clearly not worthwhile for the artist to sue.
I said "would have increased" because the system was never actually deployed. Oh, well, my employer took UMG's money at an extravagant hourly rate for six months, so it's a little less in their pockets. Some might argue "well, they're just going to pass it on to the fans or take it out of the artists", but they're already screwing the artists just as hard as they can, and they're already charging more than the market will actually bear for music (a couple of studies have shown that they could make more money by lowering the prices), so I'm pretty confident it came out of the coke & hookers budget.
It is with great pleasure that I watch the demise of this corrupt industry.I agree wholeheartedly. All the more so after seeing how they operate in gory detail.
Perhaps they will find some way to continue existing as providers of publicity.I hope it's other people who find a way to make a living providing publicity and arranging shows, but you're probably right.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Well, I really like the album. The songs are accessible enough to enjoy on the first listen, but detailed enough to still be interesting on the tenth listen. It's an album to listen as a whole: there is no megahit on this one, but no fillers either.
You could download it for free, listen to it once and then pay whatever you think is a fair price. Or you could take a gamble and pay between $5 and $10 (there's 10 tracks). It's up to you.
Rather than stealing I think this is a very interesting glimpse into a post-scarcity economy.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_scarcity
The most interesting thing about this is that while 60% of the people paid nothing, the band still made more than they would have under the old method. Perhaps we could do this with the food we currently pay farmers not to grow, give away staples like rice and flour for "pay what you want".
We are all just people.
The ever classic article from Courtney Love goes over the whole scheme:
http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/
Thom Yorke of radiohead produced much of his recent solo album on his laptop while riding around in a bus.
This space available.
I like what's happening here, but I agree with an earlier poster that this is more of a "fuck you" to the recording industry than a genuine indication of the viability of the model. It probably won't last. Artists need a way to ensure they get paid, while still embracing this whole consumer-friendly mentality. Here's how I think they can:
The artist signs up with what I will call "The Company". They complete their musical work. They release a song or two, or snippets of all of them. These could be played through The Company's website, seeded via bittorrent and other p2p protocols, or made available on a client in a way similar to the existing itunes store feature which allows track previewing.
The Company would use an algorithm - based on traffic to these various distribution channels, visits to the artist's myspace page, maybe even frequency of google searches if they'd be willing to make that data available -- to estimate consumer interest in the music. This would be used to determine a dollar amount that the public would likely pay for the music (a total, not an individual price).
With this figure in hand, The Company would set up a webpage where donations could be pledged. Credit card information is given, but no payment is taken until the total money pledged reaches the previously determined figure for predicted revenue (which should probably be made public, but I don't really know). When the figure is reached, all amounts pledged are withdrawn from the pledgers' credit cards. At this point, the music is made available to everyone, through bittorrent, and perhaps the itunes-style client I already mentioned. Pledgers are notified, and perhaps receive priority downloads, but the music is available to everyone. It spreads on its own, and nobody gets sued. The Company takes an eensie weensie cut to cover bandwidth costs (I imagine this as a non-profit entity). A "tip jar" type of business model could then take over to collect the donations of any conscientious consumers, but I would hardly expect this to generate much revenue.
It's not a very sophisticated plan, I suppose, but I've been mulling over it for a while and I just have to know what slashdot thinks. If some entity with enough resources, like google for example, really worked the idea over, I think there's potential.
P.S. if the RIAA patents this tomorrow I'm going to go totally fucking banana fudge sundae.
In the scenario where they're getting $2/album they don't have to foot any of those bills.
Reality is much more complicated than that, and in fact unless you're already a mega superstar you're not going to get a very nice deal.
First off, $2 royalty per album is quite generous for an emerging artist signed on with a traditional record corporation. Second, the record execs hardly foot any of the bills at all--at least not directly. Promising artists are awarded "advances". Basically an advance is a loan of sorts--it provides money to spend putting together and promoting your first albums, when you aren't generating any revenue. When your album is released you commonly get severely reduced royalties...or none at all...until the record company has recovered its investment in you (the advance).
Some other points to consider in terms of "new media" on the internet:
* marketing requires a much lower monetary investment these days--time and creativity are more important
* in order to get a deal with a record company you have to have a demo tape--generally you've already spent a lot of your own money on recording songs.
* distribution over the internet is very low cost
So, the costs to distribute an album online are much lower than the $10, $15 or more that is the difference between what the artist gets and what consumers pay for one copy of the album. It seems to me that Radiohead has done quite well here, getting revenue into the millions from one album sold on a name-your-price basis. This is just another sign that the business model of selling little plastic discs with songs made by artists held captive in a studio-system environment is obsolete and trying to make the same model work on the internet is futile. The commercial music industry is like the motion picture industry, except even more backwards, modeled after the way studios did business in the days of Gone With the Wind and Wizard of Oz. Because of that, it'll be quite a sea change that will make for very noisy lobbying.