Radiohead has decided to respond to the previous coverage of their social experiment of offering their album online at a name-your-own price. According to a study (by a third party, comScore), only 38% of downloaders paid something while the 62% majority paid nothing. And of those paying, most paid less than $4. While it was fun to speculate on what this could mean for the music industry, turns out any speculation was based on more speculation (comScore’s). Here’s what Radiohead had to say:
“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.”
“True success?” So I take it the results were better than what comScore assumed. Whatever the case, the band has to know the world is interested in these numbers. I mean, come on, how can we speculate on the fate of the music industry if we don’t know Radiohead’s “true success?”
*Update* ComScore stands by its original numbers and says, “We’re confident in our data… There’s a minimal margin of error based on the size of the sample we used and the narrow range of values.” In the mean time, Radiohead tells BBC News that the real data is “not for public consumption” as “people were still downloading [the album].”
Now I’m curious to know why Radiohead is uninterested in sharing. “People still downloading” is a weak excuse at best; the band could simply release numbers for the initial month of October. What do they have to hide?
“Radiohead will today leak/sell their seventh studio album, In Rainbows, offering it as a digital download for your choice of payment. It’s a neat way to, as fellow Pitchforker Brian Howe has said, “devise a model where they meet the culture on its own terms, rather than trying to bully us back into an obsolete [one].”
@ Cgris, i don’t know what you said but STFU anyway LOL
@ Chris, I don’t know what you said or did but STFU anyhow LOL
ummmmm… Translation anyone? Que?
blah blah blah, these guys are going to be better 😛
http://www.myspace.com/headway
PLEASE SOMONE HELP ME. I GO TO THIS SITE WHIT GOOGLE SEARCH I SEARCHING SOME PROGRAM NAME IS STAT CHANGER FOR WORLD OF WARCKRAFT I NEED THAT PROGRAM BUT CANT FIDN . SO IS GOOD SITE BUT IF SOMONE HAVE THIS PROGRAM STAT CHANGER SEND ME TO EMAIL MY EMAIL ADRESS IS [email protected] 10X
If you already paid for the low bitrate but you want the better quality bitrate, then download it. You’ve already paid for the right to listen to the music, I’m sure you can find it somewhere. No issue.
I believe they announced the CD at the same time as the download? Except the download got all the hype so no one knew. I can see someone who would have preferred to buy a hardcopy but donated would be upset, but this is not an issue with the overall distribution model – just this one time. Because next time everyone will realize that they’ll probably release a CD too, and you can decide weather to buy that or just get a download.