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38% of Downloaders Paid For Radiohead Album

Posted by kdawson on from the fanatical-fan-base dept.

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."

5 of 562 comments (clear)

  1. So the big question is... by White+Flame · · Score: 5, Interesting

    did they make more or less profit than what they would have made with the standard sales method?

  2. A lot better than software by El+Lobo · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I am the developer of a quite succesful shareware program. The program can be downloaded for free AND without limitations or nag screen. Nothing. It just works and the users would pay if they want. The "official" price is 25 USD. Counting the the "phoning home" update feature unique hits and the money that came in, I calculate that only a 10-12% of the user pays for the program.

    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!!
  3. Skued Numbers? by OVDoobie · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

  4. My Indie Band Tried this as an Experiment -Results by fyrie · · Score: 5, Interesting
    On October 18th my band put our new EP up on our website for free with a donate link.
    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.

  5. Re:In other words, greater than 6 in 10 will steal by Original+Replica · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.