Radiohead: ‘In Rainbows’ Download – A Financial Success
It was the marketing and sales tactic that is still sending ripples through the music industry one year on and now someone close to the business side of the band is revealing some proper details about just how successful the move was.
Until now the band have been very tight lipped about the move to offer their latest album ‘In Rainbows‘ for whatever price avid fans wanted to pay for it.
It was the move that everyone was shocked, relieved, excited and pretty much over the moon with at the time. No other band with the commercial success that Radiohead brings to the table has even dared to replicate the stunt – which is either an indication as to the failure of the endeavour OR just how well the details have been contained.
According to details from Music Ally, Jane Dyball (Head of Business Affairs at Warner Chappell) has revealed that the income from the downloads on the ‘pay-what-you-like’ website ‘dwarfed’ previous digital publishing income and totalled more than all the income from the bands previous album ‘Hail To The Thief’.
Physical sales of the album were available 3 months after downloading began and more than 100,000 boxsets were and continue to be sold. All avenues, including physical and digital sales, have totalled more than 3 million purchases on ‘In Rainbows‘.
Dyball noted that at all times during the download experiment both members of the band and the sales team were monitoring the average income per album. They had their finger on the pulse the whole time and were ready to pull the website if the figures dropped to low.
They realised that the most income would come during the first few weeks as this would be when the hardcore fans – the ones who would actually pay to support the band – would be downloading. They expected the income to slowly tail off as the freeloaders jumped onboard.
The most popular download method was through BitTorrent. This isn’t exactly surprising as it is the most efficient method of downloading large files. From a business stand point – If BitTorrent downloads were not available I am nearly 100% positive that the experiment would not have been as successful. This is due to the expense of bandwidth.
The more people downloading from BitTorrent – the less expensive each download is and hence higher returns.
Even though the effort was clearly a resounding success no one from the band has revealed any intentions to do it all over again.
Wish they’d just tell us all the numbers!