Radiohead Reveal "In Rainbows" Download Statistics ... Sort Of
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It's been a year and five days since Radiohead released In Rainbows as a name-your-own-price download. In that year the band and its publishing company Warner Chappell, which oversaw the novel release, have kept mum about its success. But today we are getting a little closer to finding out how much cha-ching Radiohead banked from the whole gimmick as details were revealed on the topic during the You Are in Control at the Iceland Airwaves music festival.
So far total sales figures for the physical, digital and box-sets of In Rainbows are up at the 3 million mark. Of those 3 million 1.75 were physical copies. (Hail To The Thief only sold 994,000 total in the US since its release in 2003) Warner Chappell's Head of Business Affairs Jane Dyball did not reveal any solid numbers yet, but did suggest that the name-your-own-price download was successful.
According to her the publishing company, which gave the band all master recording rights and image and likeness rights for the novel download release structure, still made more money solely off the In Rainbows name-your-own-price download release than they did off the entire release of Hail to the Thief. (Note: Radiohead held out on Itunes for its previous digital releases.)
Dyball insists that the publishing company was ready to stop the pay-what-you-want scheme at any point, as no timeline was given, if the average price for the album dropped too low. She also admits that it dropped significantly after the windfall of diehard fans had picked it up already, and that there were more BitTorrent downloads than downloads from the band's Web site.
The publishing company is adamant about the experiment giving a bump to their digital income and the success of the whole project in general.
(Music Ally via NME)
Comments (9)
good post. i find this stuff so interesting.
Wow, I didn't realize Hail To The Thief sold so few copies by comparison. In Rainbows is a better record for sure, but the hype they generated around it was also incredible. They're not going to be able to recreate a situation like that again. That's a once in a career move.
yeah when i was typing this sotry the thought that crossed my mind was: how successful would this whole name your own price gimmick have been if in rainbows turned out to be as crappy as hail to the theif? would it still have had the same results? i put in rainbows up there as a top 3 when it comes to the best radiohead albums of all time.
interesting. no wonder we've seen so many other artists attempt to follow in their footsteps. and who will in the future?
I'd hardly call HTTT crappy. I know both Bloc Party and, er, Marillion have done the same thing recently. Anytime you have a certain established fanbase where you take a leap of faith and trust them to do right, and don't blatantly rip them off by offering a product of real value, it's likely to be a success.
ok, its not crappy, but its def. not as great In rainbows. thats what i was getting at fastnfab.
You're in the minority Charley, since I ADORED HTTT. I've hardly listened to 'In Rainbows', there's no comparison in my eyes. I listened to HTTT nonstop for the first 6 months I had it. And I've been a longtime fan too.
The question is, how do we get the actual details that were supposedly revealed in Iceland of all places. I browsed the links but found nothing yet.
The acid test will be their next release. If the Name-your-own price was successful, they'll do it again. If not, not.