Radiohead May Have Made $6-$10 Million on Name-Your Cost Album

mytrip passed us a link to a Wired article indcating that if music industry estimates are correct Radiohead has made as much as $10 million on the 'In Rainbows' album so far. This despite the estimates of widespread piracy of the album as well. "[The estimate assumes] that approximately 1.2 million people downloaded the album from the site, and that the average price paid per album was $8 (we heard that number too, but also heard that a later, more accurate average was $5, which would result in $6 million in revenue instead).

Finally!

[HartDev]

Now there is proof that artist do not need the record labels to make money, I hope someone in RIAA sees this and trembles as they show it to their higher ups!

Re:Finally!

[larry bagina]

It's proof that well known band can make money without a record label. Which wasn't exactly news.

Re:

[budgenator]

I used to sing karaoke a lot and our town of 35,000 had 3 or 4 people that were as good as any with record contracts (I was far from being one of them). So assuming that my town isn't special that's about one in a thousand, the USA with over 250 Million people should have 250,000 singers on the bilboard top 100 list!

Re:

[Wildclaw]

And they even got a lot of free advertising a.k.a. "news".

That isn't to say that the idea doesn't work. It is just that you can't test it like this and claim to be scientific.

Re:and that is the threat to the big labels;

[Belacgod]

In 20 years, the RIAA will have been completely replaced by a set of publicists. These publicists won't own the copyright to anything--they'll be paid, on salary, to hook the musicians up with venues, hire web designers for band websites, and in some cases find places to record.

They'll have a professional organization, but no lobbyists and no power. They'll be more or less fungible--Home Managers, parallel to Road Managers. Some will even do both.

Re:and that is the threat to the big labels;

[suv4x4]

In 20 years, the RIAA will have been completely replaced by a set of publicists. These publicists won't own the copyright to anything--they'll be paid, on salary, to hook the musicians up with venues, hire web designers for band websites, and in some cases find places to record.

They'll have a professional organization, but no lobbyists and no power. They'll be more or less fungible--Home Managers, parallel to Road Managers. Some will even do both.

Unless time started spinning backwards that won't happen. There's always consolidation and incorporation of any business that lasts more than 5-10 years in the industry.

You're right: labels will lose a LOT of their power, similar to how movie studios lost their business with exclusive contracts with actors in the 70-80 period. Also some of the big labels will go away, and some will adapt to the new business model.

Where you're wrong is that those alternatives won't grow and become big companies and have their own lobbies.

The same will happen with the publishers that will replace TV channels like MTV. Look at one emerging publisher: YouTube. Is it some tiny player with no power? No. Even before Google bought them, they had influence since they had a big community going on. And with big community, comes Google, or Microsoft, or Yahoo, and buys them. Consolidation.

Clarification: consolidation is not necessarily bad.

Re:and that is the threat to the big labels;

[MrSteveSD]

I have a friend in the recording industry, and he says that whenever someone wants to use some famous pop song in an advert or documentary, they nearly always have a heart attack over the amount the record company wants. Instead they usually ditch the idea and get someone to play something similar. However, in a future where the bands themselves are in charge, I think using their work for other projects will become much cheaper. It may even become feasible for amateur film-makers to get permission to use famous tracks for a minimal fee.

Re:and that is the threat to the big labels;

[Belacgod]

Extensively processed music will become a thing of the past. People will play and record on devices that are much cheaper than they do currently. The lower capital costs will enable them to better weather rampant piracy, surviving on fans' CD purchases, some legitimate online sales, and concert revenues.

Re:

[mochan_s]

Extensively processed music will become a thing of the past. People will play and record on devices that are much cheaper than they do currently. The lower capital costs will enable them to better weather rampant piracy, surviving on fans' CD purchases, some legitimate online sales, and concert revenues.

It's a marketing campaign made by the cheap recording gear makers. It is NOT TRUE.

Extensive processing can be done by anyone with the computer.

However, before extensive processing comes, we need a very

Re:and that is the threat to the big labels;

[adolf]

The cost of a quality musical instrument, as a tangible thing, might not be going down. But we're not talking about Strats or Steinways; we're talking about recording, specifically the processing end of it.

To that end, let's take amplifiers, which are the near-universal processing and monitoring side of the electric guitar. These are definitely getting cheaper. A Marshall stack is always going to be expensive, for a variety of reasons, but other amplifiers from companies like Line 6 and Roland keep bringing down the cost of quality amplification and effects. (Line 6's processor modules are also available as software plugins with no hardware dependancy, which can reduce or eliminate the need to have separate amplifiers/cabinets for each guitarist, as far as the recording process goes.)

Synthesizers are cheap, and getting cheaper. They consist largely or entirely of software, lately, and there's even a few free open-source packages that don't suck.

Commercial multi-track software recorders like Adobe Audition (formally the much more reasonably-priced Cool Edit Pro), and of course open-source products like Audacity and Ardour, allow more possibilities for recording, post-processing, editing, and mixing than were ever dreamed possible with analog gear. Multiple-input sound cards from companies like RME and M-Audio keep dropping in price and gaining new features.

It is quite possible, and has been for some years, to produce extremely professional recordings with nothing more than a few good microphones, a decent outboard A/D device, a few selections of totally free software, good engineering practices (!), a spare bedroom, a revealing home stereo (or maybe just some quality headphones) for monitoring, and the instruments that the musicians already own. Oh, and a little bit of talent from everyone involved doesn't hurt, either...

So, in reply to you, UncleTogie: Good instruments have always been expensive, and will probably only become more so as the cost of raw materials continues to escalate. But gone are the days when the only way to cut an album was to rent time in a recording studio stuffed with gear, and so the cost of cutting an album is indeed dramatically lower than it has been in the past.

And in reply to GP: Because computers are, by any estimate, quite cheap and getting cheaper by the second, it is simply not very hard to produce "heavily-processed" music without a "proper" studio. These days, they're even fairly quiet, which again lessens the cost of recording -- there's just no great need to physically isolate a modern, quiet, cheap Dell machine from the recording space. This makes the whole process a lot cheaper in terms of real estate, dedication, and cabling. Even my 2-year-old laptop is able to run for extended periods with the fan completely disabled, its Hitachi hard drive is practically silent, and it is more than fast enough to enable nearly any manner of "professional" recording thanks to the virtues of USB 2.0 and Firewire.

Nine Inch Nails' most recent album was largely recorded in hotel rooms and tour buses, for example, using the same software and technology that is available to anyone else. And while the expensive Protools rig that Reznor finished the album with is sure to enable a smoother and more productive workflow than anything being produced in Audacity, that doesn't mean that a competent engineer cannot accomplish similar results with far less.

Back on topic, these lower barriers to entry all conspire to mean that a recording contract continues to be less and less useful to a musician or band which seeks to make money selling the products of their creativity, but that by no means is any indicator that quality must suffer in exchange.

Re:and that is the threat to the big labels;

[LooseIsNotLose]

Seriously, what expensive startup costs? If you want to record yourself there's the initial outlay in a powerful computer set up and perhaps Pro Tools, and some good microphones for drums and vocals. So--maybe $10,000? $20,000? And once you've got that equipment, you can use it as much as you want, with no hourly studio time.

And if you don't have the knowhow or money to do the recording yourself, there are all kinds of small studios with perfectly decent engineers that charge less than $1,000 for a day. It's perfectly feasible to record an album for $5,000-$10,000 this way, or much less if you have connections or friends in the small-time recording industry.

After that, electronic distribution is essentially free, via MySpace, or by setting yourself up on iTunes, eMusic, etc. If you also need CDs, a company like Kunaki can produce them for you on the fly for less than $2 each, *and* handle the ordering back end.

Compared to a lot of other things you could do for a living, music is *not* an expensive industry to be a part of, if you don't buy into the rock 'n' roll life style, often lived by artists who are *fearsomely* in hock to their major label for some ungodly advance money that it will take royalties years to pay off, if ever.

Re:and that is the threat to the big labels;

[Irish_Samurai]

Compared to a lot of other things you could do for a living, music is *not* an expensive industry to be a part of, if you don't buy into the rock 'n' roll life style, often lived by artists who are *fearsomely* in hock to their major label for some ungodly advance money that it will take royalties years to pay off, if ever.

Preach the truth brother.

I'll lay all my cards on the table, I'm a turnaround marketing consultant. I make A LOT of money showing business entities how to reformulate their images, re-purpose their delivery mechanisms, and polish their overall revenue generating vectors (god that sounds like awful marketees).

You know how I do it?

By showing them how consumers actually want to consume.

PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO LIVE THE WAY BUSINESSES WANT TO TELL THEM HOW TO LIVE!

That shit is dead. You can make more money doing it all yourself and by NOT pushing it to everyone on the planet. You don't have to lie. You don't have to falsely claim you're something your not. You don't have to INTRUDE. You don't need to buy into the A&R guys pitch.

DO NOT LET THE INDUSTRY TELL YOU YOU HAVE TO DO IT THEIR WAY! It is a lie. There are more than enough people out there who want to hear the music you make who will pay you for it. Enough who will pay for it and enable you to live comfortably.

YOU HAVE TO MAKE A CHOICE. Do I want to be a "rock star" or do I want to live by creating music. The two are not the same.

XTC was doing this shit IN THE FUCKING 80's.

I have worked with "capitalistic" businesses. I have taken their money and they have failed. I have worked with "idealistic" businesses. I have taken their money and watched them flourish utilizing the knowledge I have passed to them.

It isn't rocket science. I'll even give it away for free right here.

Don't tell people they want you, make yourself available to people who want what you have.

Re:and that is the threat to the big labels;

[minorproblem]

My sister does this actually, she has recorded her last 4 albums in small studios, and then sells her music through itunes and at live gigs, she isn't rich but she actually makes a decent living. After factoring in the cost of printing the cd's and recording plus putting money asside for her next recording she ends up with about $16AU pure profit left over from the cd sales. Which isn't bad at all seeming she does about 2 - 3 gigs a week and will ussually sell about 20 - 40 cd's at each gig ontop of the door fee. I am envious of her actually even though she earns much less than me she gets to spend her weeks chilling out with diffrent people writing music and playing in there gigs for fun etc.

Re:

[budgenator]

OMG think of the Children! if the record companies didn't make as much money, then they couldn't pay the lawyers to sue gradnmas with multiple scerosis for piracy and the lawyer's children mught have to go to Public Schools !

Re:Finally!

[budgenator]

you mean like cdbaby [cdbaby.com] or more like Jamendo [jamendo.com] or DMusic [dmusic.com] and of course GarageBand [garageband.com]?

Re:Finally!

[Incongruity]

As far as I am aware, what each of those lack (despite being useful, useable and successful, each, more or less), I think, is the big act/star power that a few bands the caliber of Radiohead would bring to such a venture. Their name recognition would lend a certain authenticity to such a site in the eyes of the mass-market consumer, I think.

Perhaps not, but it'd be interesting to see...

Re:Finally!

[Seumas]

Of course they don't need labels.

With a label, if a musician has some decent pull, they might get $2 on a $20 album.

Without a label, a musician gets $2 on a $2 album.

The consumer/fan saves $18. The musician still makes just as much money. And potentially a lot more, since more people would be likely to pay $2 for an album than $20.

Re:Finally!

[burris]

uh no, with very few exceptions, the musicians make $0 on a $20 album. That's because all of the costs of production, promotion, packaging, advance, etc... come out of the (in your example) $2 royalty, not out of the $16 wholesale price.

Re:

[no_opinion]

This is obviously false. If an artist got $2 on a $2 album, that would mean there was no cost to set up the site, no cost to take the credit card, no cost of bandwidth, no cost for PR or marketing, etc., all of which we know is false. What's more realistic is that an artist gets $2 from a $3 or $4 album.

Even without a label, the artist isn't out there doing these things without help. Someone is getting paid to do the distribution, but the splits are much better if it's not a (typical) label.

Re:Finally!

[p0tat03]

Question: How much money did it take to get the band's publicity to the level they enjoy now? At the risk of being the devil's advocate, is it entirely likely that they are using the publicity someone else (the labels) paid for to generate sales for this album? Perhaps we should subtract such an equivalent cost from the figures and see how much they ACTUALLY made.

Re:Finally!

[McFadden]

At the risk of being the devil's advocate, is it entirely likely that they are using the publicity someone else (the labels) paid for to generate sales for this album?

What a strange suggestion. Presumably the fact that their record label has been paid handsomely with a cut from every one of the last 6 multi-million selling albums isn't enough then? Radiohead have more than paid for their previous distributor's services.

Re:

[pushing-robot]

Actually, according to Wikipedia and other sources I could find, "Hail to the Thief" never went platinum (=1,000,000 sold) in the US. It went platinum in the UK, but the bar is lower (300,000). "In Rainbows" has now sold 1.2 million in a matter of days.

Compared to the first week of Thief, Rainbows sold at least four times as many copies, and each copy of Rainbows, on average, netted Radiohead more and cost customers less.

However you slice it, this release was an unmitigated success for Radiohead, not to m

Re:Finally!

[irtza]

Most likely not; however, Radiohead grew up in a time of labels. The labels control of the market is still unbelievably strong. This will not change until people start adopting sites like you-tube or something similar as their primary source for new media content.

Essentially, everyone will continue to ask the question "Do we still need the labels?" until we have a band become successful without them. On the flip side, the lack of a successful artist without one will never remove the question of whether they are needed.

Essentially, I think the question posed is pointless. The utility of the labels is being determined now because this is the first attempt of independence by a big name. Smaller names won't get a chance until a means to discover them becomes popular.

Re:

[budgenator]

It's more likely that the band had a small but loyal group of fans enough to insure break-even at resonable expenses before the label would even touch them. Then their contract almost certainly had clauses where the band would cover production and promotional costs out of their take so it cost the record company is zip so far. Also consider that the labee is heavily subsidiarised so they only bid out jobs to companies they own so there is no competion to drive down the costs the artists pay.

Re:

[ucblockhead]

All bands signed to labels have things called "contracts" that specify exactly how much they owe the record companies for the publicity generated by the label.

Re:Finally!

[smackenzie]

The facts are:

1. Radiohead has been in business for, say, 21 years.

2. Radiohead signed a SIX album recording contract with EMI, that promoted the hell out of them for two decades.

3. Labels were indirectly, but substantially, responsible for changing their name from "On a Friday" to "Radiohead".

4. They recently admitted that working without a label is "both liberating and terrifying"...

Yeah, that will teach those labels! Bands that have been busting their ass for 20+ years don't need them any longer! Somehow, I don't think if I put up my album under the same conditions, that I would make daily front page at Slashdot and spend an afternoon thumbing my nose at the labels.

These guys have paid their dues, toured until exhaustion, and have worked within the system for longer than a lot of people responding here have been alive. People, please, get off of BitTorrent and just pay a nickle, or a quarter or a dollar for every song you really like on their site. At least give the rest of us without the Radiohead exposure the hope that if we earn even a fraction of their commission, we'll be ok...

Re:

[pipingguy]

"both liberating and terrifying"

Any major change (in any endeavour) should be like this, unless stifling and routine is preferred.

Clapton agrees...

[MC Negro]

From the last two pages of his autobiography -

The music scene as I look at it today is little different from when I was growing up. The percentages are roughly the same - 95 percent rubbish, 5 percent pure. However, the system of marketing and distribution are in the middle of a huge shift, and by the end of this decade I think it's unlikely that any of the existing record companies will still be in business. With the greatest respect to all involved, that would be no great loss. Music will always find its way to us, with or without business, politics, religion, or any other bullshit attached. Music survives everything, and like God, it is always present. It needs no help, and suffers no hindrance. It has always found me, and with God's blessing and permission it always will.

One thing's for sure:

[Enlarged to Show Tex]

They probably made more money off their album doing it this way than they ever would have made off the same album going through a record company. By the time you account for all the middlemen, marketing, and so forth, they might even have lost money on the album based on the level of sales, downloads, and so on.

Re:One thing's for sure:

[Ynot_82]

and maybe it's due to the novelty of it.

would artists make the same sort of profits (eclipsing POS sales) if this model was more common place?

dunno
but it's a bit shortsighted to take one positive example and treat it as a working model

Re:One thing's for sure:

[slittle]

If it was culturally encouraged they might. Service people and street performers get tips even when it's not legally required, after all. If society develops around the free exchange of the arts, it may simply be the done thing to pay for what you like.

In the short term though, it's probably going to be more like "w00t, free shit lolz!!!" than the above.

Re:

[Shads]

Here's some interesting numbers:

500k Albums is Gold, 1m Albums is Platinum, 2m is Multi-Platinum (double plat, triple plat, etc), 10m is Diamond.

US Sales for Radiohead look this... Pablo Honey - Platinum 1m-2m, The Bends - Gold 500-1m, OK Computer - 2 x Platinum 2m-3m, Kid A - Platinum 1m-2m, Amnesiac - Gold 500-1m, Hail to the Thief - Gold 500k-1m... For a total of ~5.5m-10m albums sold.

If they got 3$ per album sales (they wish) they'd have made ~16.5m-30m on cd sales alone.

If people paid an average of $5-

I remembery trying to pay for this album

[bit trollent]

The website failed and left me frustrated. I went to my bit torrent site of choice and got it there.

Then I decided it was alright but not really worth paying for.

I wonder what Radiohead thinks about all the people who tried to pay for their music, couldn't and downloaded it / got stoned instead.

Re:

[caramelcarrot]

Indeed, I was willing to pay £5 for it, except I couldn't work out how the fuck to buy it from their site. So I just got it off the local DC++ instead. Oh well.

Re:I remembery trying to pay for this album

[Anonymous Coward]

I downloaded it from their site, but paid $0 as their site was so terrible I didn't feel comfortable entering my card number.

I'd gladly paypal a few dollars to them if they'd put up a link.
(How bad must a store be when paypal seems trustworthy in comparison?)

PROTIP for firefox users

[tetromino]

The website failed and left me frustrated.

I'm using Firefox on Linux, and I too had some trouble with the site (the flash navigation didn't work). Fortunately, View -> Page Source revealed Radiohead's secrets. Firefox users, just click here:
http://www.inrainbows.com/Store/index3.htm [inrainbows.com]

Cue Mozart's Requiem for the RIAA

[ackthpt]

Six. Million. Dollars!!

Beyond discounting the damage of piracy to RIAA partner profits, the fact a band can raise at least that much money selling their own album suggests the bar is now so low bands need not sell their souls out for a record contract.

So Madonna is considering a fat new contract with some record company, that's their mistake. She's past her use by date anyway.

I think I need to record some of my own music and see how it flies.

Re:Cue Mozart's Requiem for the RIAA

[Bluesman]

There's one thing that the record companies provide that you can't typically get on your own, and that's publicity.

Radiohead is only able to cause this much of a stir and make this much money because everyone and his brother heard "Creep" on the radio umpteen times in the late 90's. Otherwise nobody would know who the hell Radiohead is and their name-your-price album would sell no better than the thousands of other bands charging $5 for a CD that hardly anybody has ever heard of.

And I don't think that's a bad thing. I think I'd like nothing more than the complete breakdown of the music industry so that you'd actually have to go out to bars to hear people play. I think with national exposure given to a select few by the media companies, great local and regional bands have a much tougher time finding an audience.

If it no longer paid to spend the millions promoting those few bands, they'd have to compete with the people who didn't win the record contract lottery, and we'd all be better off.

Re:Cue Mozart's Requiem for the RIAA

[N7DR]

And I don't think that's a bad thing. I think I'd like nothing more than the complete breakdown of the music industry so that you'd actually have to go out to bars to hear people play.

I've never been one for going out to hear local musicians -- but in the past year I have been to several local concerts in bars and small theatres, and almost without exception I have immediately purchased one or more CDs (indie, of course -- often they're just burned CD-ROMs) from the artist. I have been frankly amazed at how good some of the these unknown local artists are. So the whole "having to go out to bars" thing has certainly worked for me.

There is only one way to find out the truth.

[Funkcikle]

If you downloaded the Radiohead album please reply here and say how much you paid, so that we can send a bill for our rightful share to Radiohead.

Sincerely yours,
The RIAA

Re:There is only one way to find out the truth.

[Funkcikle]

Negative one hundred and two million Euro. Now go get your share.

Our accountants have put this into our Excel spreadsheet and apparently we are in for a LOT of money.

Figure for comparison?

[Burnhard]

I would be interested to know what kind of gross they could expect from a label promotion and distribution in the "old way". The figure given here is a bit useless without that piece of information ;).

Re:Figure for comparison?

[metrometro]

Use this:

Number of album sales * Average Retail price * 0.1 = artist's take.

Labels, retailers middlemen and RIAA lawers generally take a 90% cut. Traditionally, the label pays for production and advertising, which was considerable pre-internet. Those costs have plunged now that the internet can hype anything and production costs can be trimmed to 2 or 3 good mics, some software and a laptop.

But all you really need to know is that the old way got them ~$2 an album, and this way got them $5 or more (estimated), while building considerable goodwill with fans. Sounds like a pretty good model to me.

Re:

[Apotsy]

production costs can be trimmed to 2 or 3 good mics, some software and a laptop

If you want it to sound like complete ass, sure. Digital technology has helped to somewhat reduce a few of costs associated with recording, but a controlled acoustic environment is still necessary to capture a clear record of the sound.

Re:

[metrometro]

> a controlled acoustic environment is still necessary to capture a clear record of the sound. Like suburban basement full of mattresses and carpet samples? Check. What else you got?

I'm impressed.

[pushing-robot]

Not bad earnings, considering that this means (a) the album went platinum with no marketing help from a major label, and (b) even letting consumers name their own price (and pirate the album freely), Radiohead is making better royalties than they would through a label.

Destroys both of the arguments the labels make in their own defense. Other artists would be fools not to learn from Radiohead.

Re:

[RonnyJ]

this means (a) the album went platinum with no marketing help from a major label

You have to consider that Radiohead were already hugely successful (partly down to previous marketing from a major label), and also that their new album got huge publicity from many news sites due to the way it was being released.

It's extremely hard to imagine that a small band (let alone an unknown) could have got anywhere near the amount of publicity this has had. Even if another band as big as Radiohead released an album in t

Re:I'm impressed.

[Dunbal]

It's extremely hard to imagine that a small band (let alone an unknown) could have got anywhere near the amount of publicity this has had.

      Gee I guess you've never head about Chris Crocker and his "Leave Britney Alone" video have you? I'm in the fucking Costa Rican jungle and I've heard of him. I assure you, if a decent band posts some decent music, the fame will come. No RIAA required.

Re:I'm impressed.

[metrometro]

A new band wouldn't turn this profit, but that doesn't mean the model can't scale down. I played in several bands for years, got put on a couple of ska complilations and our total record industry provided cut was under $500 bucks. Never got signed to a full album contract. If we'd skipped all that, put our music on a website and pushed a fan base to chip in, I suspect we'd have done more. Could we get 100 people to chip in $5 for a free download? I think so - we played show to that many people twice a month for years.

In the process, we would have gotten our music in front of more people and generated goodwill in the fan base. So there's a better growth potential, as buyers become, in a way, backers.

good, but....

[illicit7118]

This is a first step (if true) however doesn't solve a bigger issue. Radiohead can do this because they are an established band, who became established because of the current industry infrastructure mind you. This modeal does NOTHING for an unknown band. How do you complete the bridge to the future?

Completely Irrelevant

[Ambiguous Coward]

This is all well and good, but it completely ignores the fact that if people are pirating music, the artists can't make any money!

-G

for the record

[SolusSD]

Making $6-$10 million on a new album the week it comes out is _unheard-of_ in the music biz-- especially since radiohead gets to keep most of it, if not virtually all of it. (When you buy a CD in the store for $14 less than a dollar actually goes to the artist). Also-- this album went platinum in the first week! Huge success for Radiohead.

Re:

[burris]

The artist royalty may be less than a dollar but generally the artist doesn't get any of that. That's because all of the costs of production, marketing, packaging, etc... come out of the artists royalty.

see http://www.negativland.com/albini.html [negativland.com]

Re:

[Tuoqui]

Naw Uncle Sam takes 40%... Still a huge lump of cash they're sitting on though.

Re:for the record

[ucblockhead]

Wow! I hadn't realized the IRS took over the UK!

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Rubbish. $6.95 will buy a web hosting account with 1TB of disk space and 1TB of data for the month. Let's be really generous and say the album is 100MB in size. The total cost for each album downloaded is $6.95 / 1TB * 100MB = $0.000695. This is a negligible cost. For 1.2 million downloads the cost is $834. Even I could afford to pay $834 up front out of my own pocket. Think I'll start learning the guitar...

Re:

[wes33]

First of all, the inrainbows.zip file is 48.4MB. Second, $17K is is .0017 of $10,000,000.00 I.e nothing.

Re:for the record

[Chandon Seldon]

In this case, bandwidth is a smaller expense than credit card processing fees - if they got a decent price for their bandwidth, by an order of magnitude. Remember that sites like Youtube exist - the larger videos on their approach the size of a music album, and *none* of their users pay money.

Re:

[Dunbal]

Keep in mind bandwidth isn't too cheap.

      You're joking, right? Even if it cost them 100k (that would be 8 cents PER DOWNLOAD which I sincerely doubt), name me another industry where you can make a 10000% profit margin?

Definition of Work

[randalware]

        I like the concept and I am glad Raidiohead tried this.

After looking at the royalty rates for software authors, musical artists, and other creative arts (movie,video,etc)...
The big companies / middle men are raking it in.
And the consumer is paying the bill.

The internet is leveling the playing field.
Lower cost of product, fewer hurdles to distribution, censorship by the consumer's choices (purchase y/n), variable/negoiatable pricing.

More money in being an artist.
Lower cost to consumer.
More artists can make a living being creative. (but possibly fewer mega-rich ones)
Fewer creative limits for the artist.
And the parasitic middle men can change careers.
Middle men that actually add value to the process will still exist. (but make a much more modest income)

The artist win ! The consumers win !

Honestly

[PJ1216]

I didn't find the album worth paying for, however I still purchased it for ~$10 (5 pounds). I did it more so to support the idea as opposed to really enjoying the music. I found it to be great background music while doing other things, but not really worth actively listening to. Of course this is just my opinion, so please don't kill me. I'm just stating that it's worth going through the trouble of paying a few bucks just to support the idea so others will do it. Hell, if you like the idea of what they're doing, but hate their music, I still think its worth your effort to pay a few bucks just to inspire other artists to do the same. On Trent Reznor's (of Nine Inch Nails) website, he said in the future he'll be participating directly with the audience now instead of working with record labels because he's now finally free of any record contracts as well.

If you don't like the music, just look at it as making a donation to the cause of destroying the RIAA.

Great! Yes, make even more money!!

[blind biker]

I really hope all the other musicians still under the shackles of a RIAA-affiliated label will feel positively JEALOUS of the kind of dough Radiohead is making!

While I despise greed, it might just be a very powerful force in the downfall of the labels and therefore the RIAA. Just imagine all those musicians just NOT renewing their contracts (or even trying to end their current ones) and go onto forming their own label and sell their music directly to their fans!

That's what I ahve said over and over again

[geekoid]

If the musicians do not sign, the contracts will be changed.
If all new group boycotted the contracts en mass, they would change, literally over night.

I am not sure why you imply radiohead is being greedy.
They let the fans pick the price. The amount of money someone makes has NOTHING to do with greed.

Not as Altruistic as First Appears

[Carcass666]

Radiohead has always been planning on releasing their CD [gizmodo.com] in January. Putting out a 160 kbps crap quality version is there way to whet your appetite for the real CD, which will probably contain more content than the mp3 release and be of much better quality.

Aliasing

[bodrell]

Ah, so I was wrong about the number. It only contains frequencies up to ~22kHz, which is sensible in light of the human auditory range I mentioned in my earlier post.

This is why I don't read /. so much any more. Lots of people know the numbers, but too few know what they mean.

Methinks you don't know what the numbers mean in this case, either. Think about it for a second--if you were to encode a 22 kHz sine wave (nothing complicated right now) with a 44.1 kHz signal, how many points would you have pe

Thats it !! Im quitting web development

[unity100]

and starting up a band asap !!

They would have made more

[teslatug]

I'm sure I'm not the only one who went to their site to buy it, and couldn't even find a link to click on!!! I kid you not, all I saw was the psychedelic colors, tried clicking on things (or rather hovering) and couldn't even get a link. They should really find some more competent people to create their site and host it (it would have paid for itself). And by the way there should be one site, not a new site for every album they make. I wasn't even sure if it was legitimate site due to the poor design and not being their main site.

A Great Disturbance in The Force

[HangingChad]

Darth RIAA just felt a great shudder go through the record industry. As if thousands of A&R reps cried out at once and were suddenly silenced.

it's not all clear profit

[Tpenta]

Even without the recording industry, there are still costs associated with the production of the album, for example studio time and people to do post production etc. Estimating all sales as purely profit is short sighted and simplistic to say the least.

It must still be said though, even with the costs involved in making the album, that's a nice wad of cash.

Tp.

So much for the Record Company

[HermMunster]

An artist generally makes $.07 per song on any given album. If an album were to sell a million copies the artist would have made $70,000. Given the tax bracket the artist would have probably paid close to 50% in taxes. That leads to a $35,000 income off a million copies of an album sold. Even if the tax bracket is lower you can see that the artist just didn't make much money. In the past the artist used record sales as an advertising path for their concerts. That allowed them to make up for 93% of the income off those record sales that went to the record company.

Now you consider $8.00 per album and the $6 to $10 million made and you know this was the right move for them. It opens up the world for them. It breaks the cartel set up by the recording industry and essentially issues a pink slip to all of them and any employee that promoted that decadent system to begin with. No more billionaire recording company, instead the artist gets the benefit of their artistic talents.

This is really incredible because if they have made that much money they have changed the whole structure of how music will be sold. It is a very glorious day that the recording companies are now going to be removed as the middle man. It also means that if music distribution becomes primarily done through this mechanism we'll see a major shift away from those recording taxes on everyone that buys CD blanks, etc.

Now consider this, no more lawsuits against Radiohead customers, none of their money going to the RIAA to allow them to fund lawsuits against old ladies, the disabled, and even the dead. Just amazing if other artists recognize the value of this and move to this same model. Hey, I might start buying music again.

What a wonder the internet is. All the recording industry can say is "bad internet, bad bad". But the artists can say "good internet, good good" because they can now make the money the deserve from their efforts. This is total unequivocal proof that the recording industry, the content rights holders, and their lobbyists are wrong.

They don't have a label anymore

[MichaelCrawford]

they are completely independent, or perhaps you could say they are their own label.

I doubt many record labels would have permitted them to do this.

Re:

[dsanfte]

'How about we lay off that word now?'

(fixed for weirdness)

Re:

[6031769]

Sure you can. Read the GPL sometime.

Re:wtf

[Martin Blank]

Piracy is unauthorized replication and distribution. A copyright holder can require that those who get something for free get it from a specific source. In this case, downloading it for free from Radiohead is not piracy, while downloading it via eDonkey is piracy.

Re:

[MightyMartian]

You know, words do evolve in meaning over time. Trying to win an argument through etymological fallacy only proves your level of desperation.

FUD through name calling

[Scrameustache]

You know, words do evolve in meaning over time. Trying to win an argument through etymological fallacy only proves your level of desperation.

Piracy still means attacking boats http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4584878.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Actual pirates still kill real people, still really steal real cargo.

Trying to sow FUD about file sharing through this etymological fallacy only proves the *AA's level of desperation, and your defense of their crimes against language only proves you're a tool. "piracy" applied to file sharing is the same as a godwin: it's making a mountain out of a molehill.

Re:

[MysteriousPreacher]

Yep, in the same way that an act of god is quite literally a verifiable intervention on the part of a deity. Words and phrases don't always have a literal meaning. I've been called a bastard by mates, but it was never meant to imply that I was born out of wedlock.

Piracy has been used to describe copyright infringement since the 19th century.

Re:wtf

[shark72]

"I'm sorry, but, if it's FREE, then it's not really PIRACY."

Popular understanding of the term "copyright" is that it refers to one's exclusive "right" to how something is "copied" (hence "copyright"). Does your understanding differ?

Putting on my Nostradamus hat for a second (although I will not write this as a quatrain), my guess is that we'll see your argument a lot more in the future. Many pirates claim that they have a moral allowance to pirate music because it's outrageously priced at a buck a track, and claim (disingenuously, of course) that they'll start buying when the price hits ($_CURRENTPRICE - $_ARBITRARYVALUE). When that day comes, I suppose the argument will be "Well, now it's practically free, so if I just help myself to the torrent, it's not really piracy now, is it?"

Re:Who the fuck is radiohead?

[joe_bruin]

Who the fuck is radiohead?

Karma police, arrest this man.

Re:Who the fuck is radiohead?

[netsavior]

what a Creep

Re:

[GrubInCan]

You could have just given him Low Morale [lowmorale.co.uk]

Re:

[AgNO3]

Please help me know when artist where NOT paid in historical times. I don't mean artist that didn't get paid I mean a time when artisans where not paid for there skills and work as a profession. The Pyramid artist where paid well from all accounts and pretty much since then I can show that artist have been well compensated for there work. Mozart was not a popper. I guess I should stop putting $ in the street musicians basket cause he is obviously not about his art.

Re:

[10bellies]

Van Gogh Sold 1 hole painting

The original Goatse?

Re:Who the fuck is radiohead?

[WIAKywbfatw]

Who the fuck is radiohead?

When I am King you will be first against the wall.

Hang on a sec, that abbreviated would make a cool ID. I really should do that...

Re:Who the fuck is radiohead?

[ilikejam]

How long have you been waiting for that?

Re:Who the fuck is radiohead?

[WIAKywbfatw]

Hey, when life throws you a soft pitch like that you don't just tap it for a single, you smack it out of the park.

Re:Who the fuck is radiohead?

[geekoid]

So you're saying the same person downloaded the same song over and over again? that's just stupid.

Firefox gets changed from version to version.

The only exception is if someone accidentally deleted it; Which I imagine would be very few people, if any.
Althoguh I am not a fan, Radiohead is very popular...at least here in the northwest.

Re:Who the fuck is radiohead?

[The Great Pretender]

I paid $10 but dowloaded it twice. Once at home and once at work. Seemed to be easier than downloading it and then putting it on a thumb drive taking it to work and uploading it. I must be really stupid.

Re:

[Ilgaz]

I just downloaded it 3 times. You know why? Because they are stupid enough not to setup a private tracker, offer the file with 1% of cost of bandwidth and do ordinary HTTP server download just like back in 1994. My browser crashed 3 times because of a bug in completely unrelated tab.

Is there a rule that torrent should be ONLY use for piracy? Can't we get a private tracker URL which would be 100x more secure for them too? I am saying secure since even multi million companies which were founded by sole reason

Re:Who the fuck is radiohead?

[DCTooTall]

Possibly true, But also think about all the people who have heard of Radiohead BECAUSE of the media hoopla surrounding the fact they have decided to sell the album direct to the public via the website and cut out the RIAA/Record Companies.

There is also the added purchase support from those who may not be big Radiohead fans who would normally buy a record from them, but who are purchasing the album in order to support their decision to embrace the web... and not something to outlaw like certain parties would appearently like to see happen.....

Re:

[mitgib]

There is also the added purchase support from those who may not be big Radiohead fans who would normally buy a record from them, but who are purchasing the album in order to support their decision to embrace the web... and not something to outlaw like certain parties would appearently like to see happen.....

I did exactly that, I don't believe I've ever heard Radiohead before this release, I've heard of them, just never heard their music, and purchased this solely to add my vote of approval to the distribution model and to send a message to the large labels that consumers will buy music online when it is presented in a manner we want. After just finishing listening to this new release from Radiohead, I'm very pleased with what I hear, still do not think I would have bought this if it was released by a major l

Re:Who the fuck is radiohead?

[Scrameustache]

Who the fuck is radiohead?

Exactly. The idea that 1.2 million people downloaded Radiohead's latest is not believable given historical sales data for the band.

You mean given that since historically they've sold more than that for most of their albums [wikipedia.org] means that they shouldn't sell as much for this one, which they offer for less than any previous album?

How does that make sense?

Re:Who the fuck is radiohead?

[aleander]

Yes. That would be RIAA trying to buy out all the copies.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Except there was no transaction fee if you entered a zero price.

Re:Who the fuck is radiohead?

[gigne]

The 45 pence charge was actually a credit card admin charge. If you put 0 in the box you didn't have to pay anything at all.

Re:Who the fuck is radiohead?

[dan828]

Actually, no. There was a credit card processing fee of .45 pounds. So strangely enough, if you opted to pay nothing, there was no need for a processing fee and thusly no charge. That way you could check out the music for free, and if you decided it was worth it you could then pay whatever you liked.

Re:Who the fuck is radiohead?

[p3d0]

If one in 300 people in the US and England bought the album you would have at least that many sales. Or if half of the people in New York City under the age of 18 bought the album you would have that many.

Right. And if just 1% of the cells in your body bought the album, well that would be 500 billion sales right there, so 1.2 million is no big deal.

Re:

[thegnu]

Except for if they sold it through the RIAA, they'd make 37 cents per sale, instead of $5. Or $1. Or whatever. Almost noone is so cheap that they can't beat what the RIAA pays.

Re:

[l2718]

Actually, even if Radiohead lost some, it would still a mean that a lot more people got to enjoy the music. In other words, the benefit to society was orders of magnitude bigger than the alternative (where most of the benefit would go to the record label). I think I'm beginning to believe Ray Beckerman's insistence that the record labels are history.

Too simple.

[Skadet]

This is an oversimplification. How much did their producer get? Their manager? Attorneys and accountants? Other support crew? In the traditional model, the label pays these people and recoups the cost from that $6m (or however much). Now, they have to do it.

It's cut out the "intermediaries" (well, aside from the payment processing people, hosting company, bandwidth providers, et. al.), but it isn't as if they're splitting $6m between themselves.