Thom and Co. have never exactly flaunted their wealth, being art-rockers in it for the art-rock, but with this whole crazy non-SoundScan-reporting, pay-what-you-will Internet release thing, everyone’s curious about just how many “copies” have been sold and just how much the band will be netting from sales of In Rainbows. According to (we stress) rumors at Gigwise, it could be a lot:
A poll of in excess of 3,000 people on a Record of the Day website has found that the average price a Radiohead fan paid for a copy of ‘In Rainbows’ was £4.
Corroborated with our exclusive that the Oxford band shifted 1.2million copies of the album – thanks to inside knowledge of a source close to the band – it means that Radiohead could have potentially earned a massive £4.8million from the album already!
Not that we shouldn’t trust an informal poll multipled by “exclusive” uncorroborated sales figures, but if the actual number comes out to be £4.8 million (or more) before the physical copies even hit the stores, I guess a “mazel tov” is in order?
Radiohead Net 4.8 Million Pounds For “In Rainbows” [Gigwise]
Yeah right, like I’m gonna buy the physical copy after paying $10 for a copy that’s looking more and more like a beta release.
Offsetting any money earned is whatever was invested in the servers and paying the support staff and etc, though it seems like that was money very well spent, at least after the initial server clogging in the first couple of days after the announcement. (I’d love to know more about all that, actually, since they’ve clearly had a good team working for them on the Net for a decade plus now.) According to this Johnny Greenwood interview from Wednesday, “it’s mostly done all on our own back with a small group of people.”
@pantsonfireliarliar: My sneaking hunch has been that the final version will be noticeably remixed.
As John Kerry knows, beware the exit polls
@Fraid: My stomach dropped when I read that. Still.
Hopefully they’ll remember to add things like melody, structure and dynamics to the songs for the real physical release.
(Did I really just type that? Sorry.)
Oh, hi Geir.
why don’t we make that a poll, then?
If that number of copies is accurate, it’d compare favorably to other blockbuster album debuts of the last decade. Of course, the trick is, 1.2m represents the number sold worldwide, which probably means lots of Brits and Yanks and a solid number of continental Europeans and assorted Asians.
If it were only U.S. figures — which it’s not, but hey, play along — In Rainbows would rank between 50′s The Massacre (1.1m) and Britney’s Oops!… I Did It Again (1.3m) on the all-time list of SoundScan debuts. But again, we’ll never know what the breakdown was between U.S. and ex-U.S. sales, so this is just me having fun with numbers.
Could someone who knows correct me if I’m wrong — I remember on “Behind the Music” that TLC earned 3 “points” per record sale (a “point” being $1 per scanned purchase). I’m assuming that Radiohead is big enough (both in band and power) to command at least 4 points in a traditional record deal. If those assumptions are right, haven’t Radiohead essentially replicated what they would’ve earned anyway through a traditional release method (of course, avoiding all the promotion crap and effort that would’ve gone along with the traditional model)?
Wow Marth, you sound pretty hard to please. Are you being sarcastic? This release has some of the best melodies Thom has ever written, in my opinion. It’s definitely minimalistic, but it makes me appreciate the actual songs more.
That said, I’ll be fairly pissed if the physical copy is indeed re-mixed or different in any way than the download I already paid for. That’ll rub a lot of people the wrong way.
@Drewcif: Just giving them a hard time. Tongue in cheek, and whatnot. But at the same time, the album just doesn’t do much for me. I’ll take OK Computer any day over their last two or three albums–a point which I hate trying to make with fans of their new stuff (i.e. everybody), but oh well. With Rainbows, though, I still say ‘god bless ‘em’ for pulling it off.
OK, granted, releasing a “better” version whenever it comes for for reals would be a pain, but they did basically give everyone the option to get the online version for free. Though was it possible to get it totally free or was some kind of fee charged even if you typed in zero pounds?