A Pot of Gold At the End of “In Rainbows”?
By now, most of you have probably heard about Radiohead’s latest album experiment. If not, the main idea of it was that Radiohead made “In Rainbows” available online to people for whatever they wanted to pay, including nothing. For more, check out Jordan Lee’s and Joey Shook’s blogs. I read their posts a while back, and since there have been a few developments in the ongoing Radiohead saga, I decided to respond with a post of my own. Basically, I wanted to find out the answer to the question everyone seems to be asking: Was the experiment a success? To get to this answer, I think I should note that the online release of the album was not without its issues. First, there was the matter of sound quality. “In Rainbows” was encoded at a bit rate of 160 kilobits per second (whatever that means), which fans complain is lower than Radiohead’s previous album. This seems like a fair complaint, but on the other hand this bit rate is higher than the standard download on iTunes. Something else fans had a problem with is the recent announcement that a physical album with possible bonus tracks will hit stores in January. That means that both the people who got the album for nothing, or next to it, and those who made a considerable donation will have to cough up more money if they want better sound and extra songs. This has some fans upset because they paid a little more thinking Radiohead was doing this great service by bypassing the system. Although I can understand where they’re coming from, I can see Radiohead’s perspective as well. After all, the band never said that was the only way they would release the album. They simply said “Here it is” and let people name their own price. Besides, those that downloaded the album did have the advantage of getting it first. That should count for something, right?
After taking into account the criticisms I’ve mentioned, I now return to the question I wanted to answer: Was the experiment a success? Let’s look at some statistics. Initial data shows that more than half a million people still downloaded the album illegally, but I suppose that is to be expected since pirates will be pirates. Maybe it’s because BitTorrent site users typically prefer to get their music all at once from the same place. Maybe they hadn’t heard Radiohead was offering it directly through their site. Maybe they’re all just music-loving kleptomaniacs. I guess we’ll never know for sure. Despite the high number of pirated copies, 1.2 million copies of Radiohead’s album were downloaded legally through the band’s site within the first week. This is a significant amount more than the 500,000 people who got it illegally and is an even more substantial increase over Radiohead’s previous album, “Hail to the Chief,” which sold 300,000 copies in its first week.
Overall, I would say Radiohead’s experiment was a success. Maybe not as much of one as the band would have hoped, but a success nonetheless. 1.2 million copies is certainly nothing to scoff at, especially for an album with practically no advertising. Plus, they’ve set the stage along with several other artists to make music less expensive and more directly available to their fans. Artists that are choosing to go without labels are at least making enough waves for the record companies to notice. The actual amount of money from online sales is yet to be determined, so only time will tell if Radiohead actually made more money by doing it this way. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if this trend really catches on as more artists realize how important it is to cater to their fans. Except maybe for Prince…
“In response to purely speculative figures announced in the press regarding the number of downloads and the price paid for the album, the group’s representatives would like to remind people that… it is impossible for outside organisations to have accurate figures on sales.
However, they can confirm that the figures quoted by the company comScore Inc are wholly inaccurate and in no way reflect definitive market intelligence or, indeed, the true success of the project.”
- Thom Yorke, Radiohead
http://www.techconsumer.com/2007/11/08/radiohead-responds-to-download-stats-says-theyre-false/
| Posted 2 years agoMany torrent sites consider 160 kbps to be subpar sound quality and usually require their users to have at least 192 kbps. I think that’s why a lot of people were upset about it. Granted, it was higher than Itunes but Itunes 128kbps file bitrate is about the lowest you can go without the sound quality being noticeably bad. Myspace players and mp3s are 96 kbps, which are absolutely terrible sound quality. Listen to a song on their and then listen to it on a cd and you should be able to tell the difference.
| Posted 2 years agoJordan –Thanks for the info on the statistics. I didn’t think those numbers were too bad considering this is a new approach for buying albums. And let’s face it, with all the changes in the music industry no one has sales like they used to. ComScore stands by the figures, but apparently Radiohead thinks they did better than that. I’m curious to see what Radiohead’s official numbers will be. Just to be clear, I wasn’t trying to mislead anyone or misrepresent the facts. I was simply giving an update on some articles that had come out about the issues. I actually thought it was cool that Radiohead chose to release it that way, so I’m not trying to paint the band in a bad light or anything.
Joey –Yeah. I know pretty much nothing about sound quality. Thanks for clarifying what’s decent and what’s not. I can definitely understand people getting kind of mad about the lower quality. I was just trying to be fair to Radiohead by mentioning that the sound quality was higher than the standard iTunes download. I thought I’d try to make a case for both sides.
| Posted 2 years agoYeah, that article was fairly new (the one I sent you). I am anxious to see what comes of all of this. I plan on getting the box set, hopefully for Christmas.
Personally, I am tired of the music industry and I think real artists will begin to emerge as the corporate empire begins to crumble.
| Posted 1 year, 12 months ago