Radiohead and NIN Selling Music Directly to Fans
The internet tubes have been a-buzz for the past few days with the news that Radiohead’s forthcoming new album, In Rainbows, is available for pre-order directly from the band. They are not currently under contract with any major label, so you’re actually buying this album from the artists themselves. What’s more, the digital download version is available for the fan-friendly price of “whatever you feel like paying,” although there seems to be an upper limit of around $200. Those of you feeling super generous will have to just send them a check for the difference.
A few other artists have experimented with this flexible pricing approach, but none as high-profile as Radiohead. And while they’re still likely to sign with a label at some point, this is definitely an interesting step towards shortening the gap between major artists and their fans.
In a related story, Trent Reznor just announced Nine Inch Nails‘ departure from Universal/Interscope:
Hello everyone. I’ve waited a LONG time to be able to make the following announcement: as of right now Nine Inch Nails is a totally free agent, free of any recording contract with any label. I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate. Look for some announcements in the near future regarding 2008. Exciting times, indeed.
From NIN Hotline
Not much in the way of details, but I’m sure those announcements he mentioned will be very interesting. Can’t wait to see where this goes.
And on a more Sinch-related note, all of our future releases are likely to be available directly from us (in case you didn’t know that already). We’ve felt this is the way to go for a while now and it’s good to see some major artists going down a similar path.
Radiohead made about $2.25 per album sale, which ends up being more than they would’ve gotten if they’d gone with a record label and released hard copies of their CDs
Just out of curiosity, where did you get that number? I’d be interested to read more about it. Honestly, I thought it would be even higher than that, especially if that’s what they made minus only the costs to run the servers that they were downloaded from. It makes more sense if they’re factoring in the recording costs and all of that.
Forgot about this post until now.
Here’s the old article: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8SOC7200&show_article=1
I just did the math on a calculator. 38 percent paid $6, 62 percent paid 0. So 0.38 * 6 = 2.28
I paid $5 for it.
And considering that at least a million or so people visited the site, they had to have made at least $2 million, but the real figure could be much more than that.
The band actually came out and said that pretty much any numbers that have been announced are incorrect since they haven’t released any numbers… whatever that means.
Either way, it’s interesting how they’re spinning this news. Using their own calculations they could figure out that the band made at least a couple million, yet they focus on the idea that “most fans” paid nothing… as if the whole thing was a failure.
Well the study was just done by some research firm, and it looks like all they did was track what their users did. Only a few hundred of their 2 million “clients” downloaded “In Rainbows,” so not only is it a very small subset, but it’s by people who would allow a company to monitor their internet usage, knowingly or unknowingly.
I would expect the real numbers to at least be close to that.
But you’re right, the article didn’t mention anything about how much the band would have made according to their findings. The average reader might glance at the article and glean that the band didn’t make much since only 38% paid for the album, and they paid an average price that is about 1/3 of what a CD costs now. I’m surprised they didn’t mention that part in the article to make it seem even more of a failure.
The South African metal band PSordid have always released their material to the public completely free of charge, and will do so with their debut album in 2008 as well (bearing in mind that South Africaś metal scene is tiny). Radiohead had a good idea but theyŕe downplaying the very bunch that made them who they are - Their fans.
Record labels rip the artists off for the most part, and the real reason for the artists making music is because they love it, not to enrich EMI, BMG, Columbia or anyone else.
So why would a band do it for any other reason? Greed, and nothing else.
How are they downplaying their fans? If they want the music for free, they’re giving it to them for free. If they want to let them pick how much money they want to give to the artist, they are letting them do that as well.