U2’s Manager Should Do More Managing, Less Talking

After starting up a firestorm of hot blogging commentary recently with his comments about the Internet and music, Paul McGuinness is at it again, this time pontificating about Radiohead’s dramatic sales failure with In Rainbows.

You might be wondering, what sales failure? In Rainbows sold as many physical copies as their previous two albums and they made a boatload of Euros from their online “giveaway”. Not so, says the wise Mr. McGuinness!

The manager claimed that most fans who downloaded the album did so through illegal means, despite the album being available for a nominal amount legally.

“60 to 70 percent of the people who downloaded the record stole it anyway,” he told BBC 6 Music’s Music Week, “even though it was available for free.”

Speaking about how U2’s album will be released, McGuinness said, “We will obviously work with whatever technology is available to make the release of the new record as interesting as possible.

“[But] for U2 physical sales are still an enormous part of our business and we still sell a lot of actual CDs.”

The record will be the follow-up to 2004’s ‘How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb’.

While I don’t doubt that U2’s blindly devoted fanbase will snatch up enough copies of their new album to outsell Radiohead, someone might want to let Paul know that “a lot of actual CD’s” in 2008 is a vastly different amount than it was back in 2004. Just ask Usher.

U2’s manager: ‘Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’ album backfired’ [NME]