The first concrete analysis of Radiohead’s innovative pay-what-you-like plan for latest album In Rainbows shows thirty-eight percent of those who downloaded the title indeed chose to pay something, while 62 percent kept their change in their pocket. ComScore (NSDQ: SCOR) data (via release) shows 1.2 million people visited the site in the first 29 days of October (it was launched at the start of the month).
The average price paid was $6 on a globalized basis but Americans were more generous, coughing up $8.05 - factor in the freeloaders, however, and it’s more like an average $2.26 on a worldwide basis and $3.23 from Americans. The most common amount offered was below $4, but 12 percent were willing to pay between $8 and $12, around the typical cost of an album from iTunes.
I don’t consider the In Rainbows experiment a failure. Of course most people will not pay anything because they are used to a different model. If more bands and artists start trying this, it may become more acceptable, and might even evolve into a social norm. Given the circumstances, I think the figures are actually high. I would expect fewer people to pay for the album. In the end it will average out for the band because standard loyalties are so low. Moreover, the band was clever to undermine the online file traders. In the end Radiohead got something for nothing.
Incidentally, I paid $6 for the download, so I made the average.
PS I have yet to see a single article or post about the album’s music. How does it stack up to other Radiohead recordings? I doubt they will ever again achieve something on the level of OK Computer, but this doesn’t mean anything since then is crappy or unlistenable. On the contrary, each album has its own space marking the emotional phase of the band. In Rainbows is a parent’s album, soft and melodious like a lullaby for a newborn or a global community about to enter a slumber. When I saw Radiohead in 2005 they were auditioning a lot of the new songs. At the time I was really disappointed because they sounded far too syrupy. Most were predicated on the vocals with little of the sonic landscape that makes Radiohead so attractive to me. I was pleasantly surprised that in the recordings a lot of that dense sonic layering is there, but never too much. It’s true In Rainbows has more ballads than past albums, but with delicate string ornamentation, the songs work quite nicely. Oh, and occasionally the album rocks hard. I am disappointed by the low bit rate of the downloads. Here and there I detect distortion and crackle on certain tones, but overall I can’t complain about my $6 worth of great music. I’m sure Radiohead spent millions making it.
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