38% of Downloaders Paid For Radiohead Album 562
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."
So the big question is... (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing they didn't account for (Score:5, Interesting)
How does this compare... (Score:2, Interesting)
it worked (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting... (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
A lot better than software (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
yes, and..... (Score:4, Interesting)
That pretty much explains the music "industry" in a nutshell.
go to drudgereport.com right now (Score:5, Interesting)
you see the very first story linked as:
"Most Fans Paid $0 for Radiohead Album..." [breitbart.com]
(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)
More data needed. (Score:4, Interesting)
also, multiple downloads (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So the big question is... (Score:3, Interesting)
I have never heard anything by RadioHead. I almost want to download the a song or two and if I like them then pay for the album. The downside is I would be counted as both a no pay and as a pay.
FUD (Score:2, Interesting)
"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.
I Paid (Score:4, Interesting)
Kudos to Radiohead, and I hope those fat cats at the RIAA and related Music Labels take heed.
Re:So the big question is... (Score:2, Interesting)
Skued Numbers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually... (Score:3, Interesting)
$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.
Re:A lot better than software (Score:3, Interesting)
It's possible that your customers feel that the program is worth something to them, but they just don't feel it's worth $25. Since you get so little money anyway, why don't you try letting people pay whatever they choose in the range of $15-$25, and see if it boosts your total income? Maybe you could add value to those who choose to pay $20 or more by giving them free updates, new features, support, etc.?
And nag screens can bad (thanks for not having one!) but perhaps there's space on the menu bar to put in a text-only "donate and register" reminder? Can't hurt to remind people that they didn't pay anything for a utility they use all the time...
Overlap (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Was it just me? (Score:2, Interesting)
I downloaded it. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
My Indie Band Tried this as an Experiment -Results (Score:5, Interesting)
Here [stellarvector.com]
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.
It would have been more... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:So the big question is... (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that once a lot (or eve a few more) people do it this way the I want more people to do this demographic is not guaranteed (works the same way with Linux games I imagine, the developers of cross platform games probably get a large (more than the 1-3% of users) Linux base, but because we want to encourage them (at least I know I've purchased over priced and old games for $30+ instead of the $10 bargin bin it would have been).
Radiohead reaped massive publicity that noone the next person will get half as much of, and soon no publicity will come with it.
That being said, magnatunes is awesome and has a lot of artists with name your price ($5 minimum) if you want to encourage more).
I purchased the album at $9.00 (I wanted to do $8.00, but the fee got me). I have always believes $5-$10 was the correct price for an album, and when given the choice I figured I should do it. Magnatunes says their average sale is about $7.50 so my theory bears out to point.
Magnatunes gives 50% to the artist, and keeps the rest for themself, which is a decent deal for both (magnatunes I assume incurs all costs). They also vet the bands so as a customer you aren't wading through shit to get the goodsm thewy also stream full tracks (my current amarok playlist is all streamed magnatunes.
I am simply a happy magnatunes customer, not a employee BTW.
Re:More data needed. (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm a big NIN fan but never heard of Saul Williams, still I bought the album without thinking. Just like I did for Radiohead, although I know their music.
And Saul Williams is great!
Best thing is, free downloads are 192 kbps. But if you pay 5$ you can choose between 192, 320 or flag!
So people if you like NIN and hip-hop download Saul Williams!
I really hope this is going to be a new way of doing music business.
Re:One thing they didn't account for (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, with only 38% of downloads resulting in payment they still pulled in over $6 million. A "band with no name" wouldn't have to get anywhere near that amount to consider such an experiment a success.
Note I said "downloads resulting in payment" not "people paying", since the former is accurate and the latter baselessly assumes one download per person. Especially for a no-name band, the "try before you buy" aspect would actually be an advantage; people reluctant to try out a new band could do so for free, and pay later if they liked it. That appeals to me anyway since I don't like "risking" my money on an album I may not like. The percentage of downloads that result in payment really isn't the important metric, then, it's the amount of money taken in.
Re:So the big question is... (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, under the record labels creative accounting methods, it's super expensive.
Almost anybody can run a dynamic range compressor on a track and make it shine.
Re:So the big question is... (Score:3, Interesting)
OMG, dude, do yourself the favor. (It's Radiohead, by the way.) Radiohead is in my top three favorites, and most fans have them at number one. Their album Kid A is my favorite album of all time -- er, maybe second favorite. Try Kid A and Amnesiac to start. If you think those are the best albums ever, you are with me; if you think they are too experimental, then go back and try their earlier albums, OK Computer and Pablo Honey, which played to a wider audience (but weren't as capital-G Good).
Also, they did have a couple big radio hits. You have probably heard Karma Police, which is a decent hit, but far from their best song.
I'm a bad fan; I haven't heard Rainbows yet.
Re:So the big question is... (Score:3, Interesting)
So did comScore;
> the results of the study are based on data obtained from comScore's worldwide database of 2 million people who have provided comScore with explicit
> permission to monitor their online behavior.
How representative is comScore's list of monitored users of the sort of people who download Radiohead cds?
But wait, there's more (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [nytimes.com] 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...
Re:So the big question is... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Educate the public?!"
Bah.
You'd think that people didn't have a natural NEED or DRIVE to CONSUME, PERFORM and SHARE music. The record industry corrupts commercial radio with payola, flogs the same cruddy musicians with posters for years on end, sues Internet radio stations, sues online guitar tablature sites like Olga out of existence, sits on copyrights until the recordings are historical, installs rootkits on our PCs, and they charge everyone money for playing or performing any recordings.
If the music industry put 1/10 of the effort that the film industry put into promotion, I don't think we'd have a problem.
Top ways that new music has reached me since 1994:
Aside from getting an album on a shelf in a CD store, they do NOTHING to promote music. In fact, they couldn't do more to repress music if they tried.
Down with commercial radio, and down with the record industry.
Re:So the big question is... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:15% after recoupment is better than average (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
I agree wholeheartedly. All the more so after seeing how they operate in gory detail.
I hope it's other people who find a way to make a living providing publicity and arranging shows, but you're probably right.
Re:Who has listened to the album? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:In other words, greater than 6 in 10 will steal (Score:5, Interesting)
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".
Re:So the big question is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Really? I'll haveto tell my friend that produced several albums that he owes someone LOTS OF MONEY. Because he did not spend it.
He built a recording studio in his basement for less than $6700.00US. It's soundproof with double walls and isolation as well. A computer with a decent recording card and he can record 8 seperate audio channels at once. He rarely uses all 8. He produces HD audio records that sound at least 90,000 better than anything produced by event he best engineers that BMI or SONY has on staff.
Over the last 6 albums he publish and sold he spent under $12,000.00 total. Less than $2000.00 per album.. that is incredibly insane dirt fricking cheap.
Who do I need to call and have collect the Lots of money from him? He's scamming someone somehow by doing it himself like tens of thousands of artists do.
Only those that believe the BS that the RIAA shovel believeit costs a lot of money to produce an album.
Re:Only in gross (Score:5, Interesting)
http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/ [salon.com]
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So the big question is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So the big question is... (Score:2, Interesting)
Another model (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Recording companies are pretty "gross" too (Score:3, Interesting)
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.