I’m no fan of In Rainbows (I paid nothing and stayed off the official D/L grid), but I'd like to do some math on the “not total failure” Harvell begrudgingly makes it out to be.
No sales figures have been released for the album, but according to the Idolator source (comScore), “a significant percentage of visitors” downloaded the album. Let’s settle on a significant percentage. Idolator cites a stat that “an E-commerce web site turns 5% of its traffic into sales in any given month”, but in quoting comScore via the Tribune as an afterthought, states that “the conversion rate for Radiohead will be ‘substantially higher’.” Let’s be conservative and say that “substantially higher” means 10%. Then, since 38% of all downloaders paid for the album, we must assume that, by the Idolater/Tribune number, 38% of downloaders equals 10% of all visitors to the site. So we have:
[1.2M (number of visitors) * 10% (percentage of visitors downloading) ] =
[38% (percentage of downloaders paying) * X (number of downloads) ] ==>
X =
315,789 (number of downloads in first month of release)
Then we have:
315,789 (total downloads) *
$2.26 (avg. paid/download) =
$713,683.14 (total sales in $)
We’ll also subtract for set-up, bandwidth and upkeep of the site, and production costs. Let’s be liberal and say that Radiohead’s costs for this relatively stripped-down song cycle nevertheless total roughly $100,000:
$713,683.14 -
$100,000.00 =
$613,683.14 (net profit)
Now, multiple net sources report a $1-per-album profit for a major label artist. Then by these numbers, In Rainbows artist profits look a lot like the profits of an album that sells 613,683 copies in its first month. This has possibly made Radiohead more money in its first month* than:
The Bends (released 3/13/95, certified gold UK 4/1/95 (100k sales), certified gold US 4/4/96 (500k sales))**
OK Computer (released 6/17/97, certified platinum UK 7/1/97 (300k), certified gold US 12/11/97)
Amnesiac (released 6/4/01, not certified UK, certified gold US 7/03/01)
If our estimate is too conservative, than In Rainbows has possibly made Radiohead more money in its first month than:
Kid A (released 10/2/00, certified platinum UK 10/6/00, certified gold US 10/31/00)
Hail to the Thief (released 6/9/03, certified gold UK 1/23/04, certified gold US 7/14/03)
All this, discounting these facts:
(a) Sales of releases in ‘07 are at an all-time low;
(b) In Rainbows hasn’t even been physically released and is by some considered an approved leak;
(c) This doesn’t include profits on the $80 discbox slated for Xmas that will surely sell in the
(d) This doesn’t include profits on the CD version that is slated to release next year;
(e) Ratcheting the percentage of visitors downloading to, arbitrarily, 20%, brings the number of downloads to 631,579 and the profit to $1,327,368.54
- This is a staggering figure considering comparative sales figures for both the band and 2007 overall sales. I’ll decline to compute the numbers for the percentage figure that I think downloaded the album in this time period (~30%).
(f) Incremental increase in fanbase paying for eg. concert tix, back-catalogue, memorabilia, etc.
(g) Labels don’t see one red cent of the numbers above—thus validating the band’s stated “f*ck you, decaying business model” intent
Circa-2007 me fails to see this as anything but a coup.
* UK/US consistently represents half of all disc sales worldwide and are two countries with highest retail sales for Radiohead albums (eg. popular Radiohead albums not certified within one month of release in France), so we’ll assume that certifications represent 66% of all worldwide sales for these albums
** Rough estimate using gold/platinum certification as a standard, with the understanding that certifications do not always happen immediately as album reaches sales plateau
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