Radiohead Net 4.8million Pounds From 'In Rainbows'

[Guest]

this is the discussion topic for article:: Radiohead Net 4.8million Pounds From 'In Rainbows'

[bmc]

i think this is a great success with artists everywhere, and now NIN is not on a label anymore, lets see what great ideas Trent comes up with, since he has had a shitload of good ideas lately.

...oh, and he is god.

[DudeAsInCool]

They made $10m in the first week!

"According to a source close to the band, In Rainbows has “sold” approximately 1.2 million copies as of October 12th. In comparison, that’s more albums sold in the first week than Radioheads’ last three releases combined. According to an Internet poll of 3,000 people, the average price paid for In Rainbows was $8. If these numbers are accurate, Radiohead has made close to $10 million in one week on this album alone.

Making $10 million on an album is incredible, especially because most of it is pure profit that goes directly to the band. After record labels take out advances, distribution costs, advertising costs, recording costs, and their cut, bands make anywhere between $1 and $2 a sale, depending on who you ask. So, if the average price paid for In Rainbows is in fact $8, Radiohead makes between four to eight times more per download than it did releasing through a major label. Not only that, but their music reached more people too. Considering that their only costs are recording and bandwidth (at maybe $500,000 and $1,000 respectively), this is not only a fantastic publicity machine for Radiohead, but a smart business decision as well."

Source: The Seminal

[Potato]

I thought they were still looking for a label to release it?

[Excrement_Cranium]

With that kind of success, who needs a label?

Does anyone hear funeral bells?

[DudeAsInCool]

This is interesting:

P2P vs Radiohead's "free" Rainbows: why P2P can be a hard habit to break

"Radiohead's innovative digital distribution arrangement for their new album, In Rainbows, lets people pay whatever they want for the music, including nothing at all. Despite that, BitTorrent swapping of the album has been on the level of other major releases. Are people really so cheap that they won't even register with the band in order to snag a free download? The answer appears to be yes," according to Nate Anderson at Ars Technica.

"By handling the recording, mastering, and distribution themselves, the band managed to keep the tubes clear of any Rainbows before the official launch (no mean feat for a hotly anticipated album). Once the album became available for download, though, it spilled immediately onto P2P networks, primarily BitTorrent. According to BigChampagne CEO Eric Garland, who spoke with Ars about the issue, the album was grabbed by BitTorrent users roughly 240,000 times in the first day of release and has tailed off since in "a perfect half-life curve.

"Read More

[DudeAsInCool]

The Seminal takes a look at the psychology of tipping:

Last week I estimated that Radiohead made $10 million off their newest release, In Rainbows. While many people were interested in my argument, a large number thought I was being way too generous. Taking into account the psychology of tipping, I feel that Radiohead’s actual profit will be higher than people expect.

Of those that thought my numbers were high, a few offered other estimates based on similarly shaky evidence. Eliot Van Buskirk at Wired’s Listening Post and Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing, citing “London music insiders,” estimated Radiohead’s take at $6 million, or $5 a download, whereas I predicted people paid $8 a download. In addition, many commenters on these sites and others thought the average price paid would be much lower, on the order of around $1.

Clearly, I can’t say what Radiohead’s actual take has been. They haven’t released the numbers. I suspect they will hold back for some time, preferring to let the suspense and speculation fuel even more publicity. However, I’m fairly certain the eventual average price paid per download is going to surprise some people.

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[DudeAsInCool]

According to CNet, "Those who predicted that Radiohead would see mass financial support after allowing fans to pay whatever they wanted for the band's latest album appear to have been a tad optimistic, according to a study released Monday.

...About 17 percent plunked down between a penny and $4, far below the $12 and $15 retail price of a CD. The next largest group (12 percent) was willing to pay between $8 and $12--the cost of most albums at Apple's iTunes is $9.99. They were followed by the 6 percent who paid between $4.01 and $8 and 4 percent coughed up between $12 and $20."

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[DudeAsInCool]

The Silicon Valley Insider says that RadioHead's take was much smaller:

"A few weeks after the hoopla over the Radiohead "pay what you like" event has died down, comScore measures who actually paid what for "In Rainbows". The good news: The average buyer paid about $6, net of processing fees, to download the album. The bad news: There weren't that many buyers -- only 2 out of 5 visitors to the site paid a penny for the tunes.

The net result: Radiohead netted about $2.26 for each album downloaded -- confirming our suspicions that earlier reports/polls about download prices were overly optimistic. And for everyone who thought that "In Rainbows" represented a new paradigm for music, remember: Radiohead has a rabid fan base that was expected to go out of its way to stick it to the man/R.I.A.A. If they can't sell music, what does that mean for the rest of the business?

That said, this still doesn't mean that Radiohead's ditch-your-label strategy was a bad call: comScore's survey suggests that the band could still have netted as much as $2.7 million from downloads, and will keep almost every penny -- and it still gets to sell CDs, and it will keep a larger portion of each dollar generated by those sales."

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[Malicious Intent]

In conclusion, nothing conclusive...

[method77]

Radiohead or not, we all know that labels will die eventually