Gawker: valleywag, in rainbows

Radiohead on ComScore numbers: Bollocks!

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 13:55:38 EST

ComScore, the online traffic tracker, told us that 62 percent of the 1.2 million fans who downloaded Radiohead's latest album "In Rainbows" weren't willing to pay for it. Now the band's management wants to kibosh those reports.

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 organizations 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.

From here, the statement looks like an easy nondenial. Most advertisers consider ComScore metrics accurate enough to be useful. And if Radiohead really wanted to indicate the "true success of the project," why not just publish the numbers themselves?

Radiohead update: Brits morally superior by 8 percent

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 15:45:11 EST

Mathematical types might object, but to me the evidence is clear. British music fans are 8 percent better than Americans and 10 percent better than the rest of the world.

According to ComScore 1.2 million people worldwide downloaded Radiohead's pay-what-you-like album, "In Rainbows." As we reported Tuesday, only 38 percent of those downloading the album chose to pay anything at all. In the U.S., only 40 percent paid even a cent, or a pence, or whatever.

But in a new report, ComScore reveals that in the U.K., a full 48 percent of those downloading chose to pay for "In Rainbows."

Now if you people would just start tipping, maybe you'd have something to talk about.

Radiohead verdict in: You people are cheap

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 11:47:52 EST

Last we heard about Radiohead's experiment to let people pay what they want for its latest album, "In Rainbows," we were ready to bury record labels. We heard the average price paid for "In Rainbows" fell between $5 and $8 and that a low estimate of Radiohead's take in two days was $6 million. But now ComScore's come out with official numbers, and, um, whoops.

Turns out the average price paid — other than zero — was actually around $8, $8.05 to be exact. But though 1.2 million people visited the "In Rainbows" site during the first 29 days of October, only 38 percent of those who downloaded the album volunteered to pay for it.

Here, you'll see that 62 percent of the world's downloaders freeloaded, too. Most of the rest only paid $4.

The only good news from an American's perspective? We're slightly less cheap than the rest of the world. So enough of all that whining about an American hegemony, OK?

Radiohead estimates doom record labels

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 11:46:42 EDT

Two weeks after Radiohead asked fans to pay only what they like before downloading their new album "In Rainbows," financial numbers are beginning to surface. So are the bloated carcasses of record labels. Why? Because though Radiohead will release the album on CD and with a label early next year, the band has—by all accounts—already cleaned up without having to share a pound.

According to one source close to the band, reports The Seminal, fans downloaded 1.2 million copies of "In Rainbows" through October 12, two days after its release. But you already knew Radiohead had a large fan base.

What nobody knew was whether fans would pay for a Radiohead album if they didn't have to. Certainly, the record labels had to be hoping they wouldn't. Too bad for the fat cats, because reports are that the average price paid for "In Rainbows" fell between $5 and $8. A low estimate of Radiohead's take in two days is $6 million. Sounds like bands with a following now have permission to skip labels.