Free Radiohead Album (merged)

abensie

Someone mentioned here that Radiohead would run a loss on this. I don't think they will. Although i don;t know the ins and outs of the recording industry i know Radiohead well.

They would have recorded this at a fairly low budget compared to most bands. they haven;t spent a penny on advertising or promotion. They have pressed it themselves and there are NO overheads on download as they already ahve a well established global website.

Now consider that your average artist only gets about 9p in royalty's for every album sold.

Radiohead will shift millions of units. Even if they only get the 45p for credit card transaction from each person they will make more personally than they would from a general record label release. Factor in that Radiohead FANS will pay a decent amount of money.

I will pay £10. the equivalent for them of selling 100 normal albums.

ange_g

I can't pay for this, when I select pay now it asks for login but I can't register with them either, anyone else had this problem?

ihatechoosingnames

ange_g wrote: »

I can't pay for this, when I select pay now it asks for login but I can't register with them either, anyone else had this problem?

i had to keep refreshing for it to work

seftona

midwinter7 wrote: »

I have no idea why they're doing it, its obvious its going to make a huge loss.

Actually, they're probably not going to make a huge loss at all. After all the other cuts come out of a CD sale, the band take maybe 15% of the actual sale price.

The best article I could find from a quick search is:

http://www.goforwardmusic.com/apps/articles/default.asp?articleid=37013

Which is American, but the principle is the same - using his example 3, a band would get $1.53 on a $17 CD. If we assume Radiohead had a record label (which they don't but for the sake of this example, lets just assume) and then also say that as a really famous band they get really good royalty rates, we could say that the band would earn £2 per CD sold

Now, if we take the poll results above, and say that everyone in a particular group paid an amount exactly in the middle of each price band (so "£0.00 - £0.49" was taken as £0.25 and "over £5" as £7.50 etc), you get the following (if my maths is right! :-)

£145.55 paid for by 58 people (this was correct when I last looked at the poll results) ... so divide the total amount by the number of people who paid and you get:

£2.52 per download

So on average, they're actually making more money than they would selling the CD through a record label!

This doesn't even take into account the fact that you should in theory get more sales online because its much cheaper for the end consumer to name their own price rather than buy the CD in the shops

Obviously, this isn't a perfect comparison, but as a business model it would seem to me to work really well for both band and fan. In fact, the only people who miss out are the record labels - wonder why they're so scared of the internet ;-)

BrianS_3

I don't seem to be able to choose a price.

Whenever I select the download and click on the basket, it states £40.

Can anyone help?

Cheers

Loadsamoneeey

you are clicking on CD and not download option

Here's a forum with artists and producers discussing the ins and outs of this move.
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/148172-how-much-does-artist-earn-re-radiohead.html
fact is that very few artists make any money these days off cd products.
I am a musician/producer myself and the business has changed drastically over recent years. All money comes from merchandise (t-shirts etc.) and concerts. unfortunately for me my health doesn't allow me to gig any more so times are rough on the musical income.
Paid £5 kind of wish I'd paid more now, nevertheless they'll get much more off this than the record company would have given and have much less hassle.
This could be the start of a new approach to music sales.
I'm delighted such a great band did it first!
Good on ya Radiohead!

merquin

As a Radiohead fan, I got straight in there and paid £40 for the Discbox - This I reckon is a bargain considering they are probably only just covering manufacturing costs, and the fact that the vinyl is going to sound so much better. I also want to give them my money and support to enable them to continue making the challenging and beautiful sounds that have been making the world a better place for many years.

I do find it a bit depressing though that the majority of you seem to be fairly smug about the fact that you are all just getting something else for nothing. I reckon part of Radiohead's reason for doing this free download thing is to conduct a bit of a social experiment - to prove that a very large number of soul-less and selfish consumers will consume their art, which they have put time, money, and love into, like another free burger/cheap flight/discounted disposable product. Enjoy the album folks.

gailbird

This looks good but I cant get any further than registering - it wont let me complete the registration process :-(

dfarry

£1 from me....

Last few albums haven't been so good in my opinion... my favourites are..

The Bends
OK Computer
Pablo Honey

MaddenLover85

Wahoo! it just went through, I tried for ages yesterday and it wouldnt do it. Glad I tried again 2day!

I paid £0.00 because I dont usually listen to radiohead and I dont really know if I like them but if I like it i will prob go and buy the cd so I can play it good quality in my car... I hate how copied CD's sound.