In Rainbows: A Success

Thom's happy

As if we didn’t know already, Radiohead’s publishing company have confirmed that the release a year ago of In Rainbows was a resounding success. The pay-what-you-like download release garnered even more publicity than would usually be the case for a Radiohead album release and, although the fact In Rainbows turned out to be a great record undoubtedly helped, the risky release manoeuvre has paid off in spades.

The publishers, Warner/Chappell, quoted facts and figures from “digital music business information and strategy company” Music Ally. If you include downloads from the In Rainbows site, physical CDs and the special vinyl discbox sets, over three million copies were sold (or given away), 1.75 million of those being CDs, which went on sale between Christmas and New Year, over two months after it had been available for pay-what-you-like download. 100,000 of the discboxes were also shifted.

And in financial terms, the figures are inarguable. Far from costing themselves money in making the album available for nothing, Music Ally says that “The fact that Radiohead had made more money before In Rainbows was physically released than they made in total on Hail To the Thief is surely evidence enough that the initiative was a tremendous success.”

However, there were issues. Music Ally note that Radiohead and their people were monitoring the average amount people were paying for the download, and were prepared to pull it early if they didn’t deem it enough. Illegal downloads from BitTorrent ended up dwarfing the number of official ones. And the band were a touch unhappy that the method of distribution became the story, not the music. As Music Ally put it, “That’s not so Radiohead. The band and Thom Yorke initially found themselves answering questions about why they chose to do what they did rather than being asked about the music itself.”

Whether they will do it again is uncertain. But they have proved that it can work.

Issue #52 - Very Bro-some

Featuring Panama Kings, ASIWYFA, an investigation into DIY touring, details of what over 25 of the finest NI bands are up to in 2009 and much more.