Ok, with roughly 1 million downloads at an average of $2.26 per download - sounds like bank to me! I'd take a cool two mill!

Good Jerb RadioHead!

The RIAA probably paid Comscore, or it works hand and hand, to come out with these findings. It would sure hurt the RIAA for a band to make millions without a stupid outdated record label and only make 100's of thousands.

that they could get even 2/5 usres paying. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea in principle, I just wouldn't expect more than 50% of people to pay. And if they are making 38% of the totals sales (if everyone had bought an album), that is likely higher than their cut if they went through a record label anyways.

The fun interesting part is that these numbers are coming with 'a minimal margin of error'.. I don't know if anyone here has ever taken stats in their life, or came into contact with anyone that does statistical analysis for a living, but I know if i would have answered a question on a test about margin of error with 'minimal amount'... umm yeah. FTW!

Comscore ruined their credibility in my eyes....

Does anybody know how this compares to what a band gets from CD sales? It seems like $2.26 is more than a band gets once the label takes their cut.

Granted you've got to be pretty moronic to think you can come up with an accurate picture with no access to ANY historical or direct information...so I can say with "confidence" that comscore must have either very desprete or stupid people working for it?

But that said, bands make money based on their contracts that they established and outlaying costs for things like videos, promotion, middlemen, etc.

Near as I can tell radiohead spent close to nothing on pormotion...has virtually no middlemen to pay out, and hasn't bothered making a video yet. So compared to your average band that only makes money by tuoring and makes near squat on album sales...

Yeah I'd say this has worked out pretty damn well for radiohead so far...assuming comscore is remotely accurate. Most bands that sign on with lables go into debt and tour to work it off.

I'd like to know how they can get this info "with minimum margin of error" unless they're snooping on Radiohead's ISP or doing something even less ethical (read:spyware) or getting it directly from Radiohead.

Given that they have a higher interest in lying than Radiohead does, I' think that I'll believe Radiohead.

So that's ~$2.2million with only a fraction of the overhead associated with selling CDs. I'd call that a success. RIAA is probably jealous.

dit TG daily report about the original report. It's obviously a load of bull with no hard data at it's base - why waste your (and my) time with these useless papers...

To bad Radiohead won't tell us how well (or bad) this experiment went (or is going)

1.2 million users- 38percent paid ($2.26)=$1,030,560.00

[trei: The $2.26 refers to the average revenue per download, which was estimated by Comscore at 1.2 million. The average revenue per download that actually saw a payment (38% of 1.2 million) was $6. -ed]

Established bands/artists get good share of CD sales from labels.

Its more the newer acts that are not established that get bad deals from record labels. This is in part because of the labels greed and in part because labels are investing in a higher risk investment. Think about it, you wouldnt invest in higher risk shares without the potential for more rewards. And many new artists dont make a profit, but the loss on those artists is covered by the acts that do.

I challenge those that keep saying that labels are greedy to take some risk to help bring new music and invest money into making and promoting a recorded product. How much returns would you be after considering the risk?

how could it be bad they have easily recouped the recording cost to make the album. This is only the first month? haha this is really a big problem for the RIAA. Now to see if they make enough to promote and fund a tour. This album could bring then each untold millions.

Trei, the numbers you used to get your figure of ~$1 million are quite wrong. Assuming that their numbers are anything near correct, the raw revenue generated is ~$2.7 million.

Of course, since the original article cites no sources, I have no way of finding how they got any of their numbers, down to three significant figures. My guess is surveys for everything except the number of hits the site saw (with all the inherent flaws in using surveys) and, and as for how much site traffic seems like a wild guess. At least they didn't guess how many downloads actually took place, or what fraction of those who visited the site actually downloaded the album.

So, I'll argue that the following is a more scientifically correct estimate: 1 million people visited the site, 2/3 of those who did downloaded the album through the site (and not another source), 1/2 of those who downloaded paid on average $5.

Though every single number there is reasonable based on my experiences and anecdotal evidence, in the end they are all pulled out of thin air. How is that more scientific? Well, I've told you exactly how I came to those numbers, and I've strictly limited the precision to one significant figure. Though I really tell you less, what I tell you is far more transparent.

Of course, both my off-the-cuff estimation and Comscore's numbers are of the same order of magnitude. Again with absolutely no empirical evidence to support me, I'll gladly throw it out there that their cool millions ($2 million to one significant figure by my numbers, $2.7 by theirs) might be an order of magnitude greater than they might have made through the traditional distribution channel.

One thing is how much Radiohead makes out of this vs. what they would get per album if sold through a label.

Another interesting number is how many of those 1.2 millions that downloaded that would actually have bought the album in any case.

I would think that selling this way on the internet exposes your music to people that would never have listened or bought it in a Record store in the first case.

Almost impossible to measure what this means, but I am sure that a noticable percentage of the downloaders would never have bought or even downloaded this from torrents.

They listen to radiohead music for one reason today, and thats because it was free and they might even have ended up paying for it because they liked it and thought it was far to give something back.

Direct quote from article -

"Comscore estimated that Radiohead made on average $2.26 for every downloaded album."

EVERY downloaded album, not paid-for ones.

This is the way that everything seems to be swinging. Computer software, TV shows, ETC. ETC... This seems to be the right way for people to create and directly profit from those creations. If the movie/TV/music studios would just release their libraries and charge a couple of dollars they would make a massive amount of money. And for those folks that wish to have premium content and bonus features, we go out and buy the DVD/Blu-ray/HD-DVD[GO BLU-RAY!!]. I am one of those people. I buy DVD's and CD's all the time. Of course I only buy what I've seen/heard and like. So the studio's need to focus more on quality content, and less on going after pirates, which is a futile effort. This ideal that Radiohead has put to good use is a great example of something that someone has done right. Kudos to them and all who follow this example.

Bands usually make a 12-15% royalty from their album sales, which are often around $8/cd wholesale. So a little over a dollar an album. This amount first has to pay back whatever advance the band received to pay for the recording of the album, and for any music videos they made. So if a band got signed for $500,000 (their advance), they would have to sell around 500,000 cd's just to recoup (i.e. pay back) their advance. Independent bands often get signed for a lot less (i.e. $10-50k) and so have to sell a lot less.

Of course bands that are more established can negotiate better royalty rates. What a record company does that a band cannot (or is not that good at) is promote and distribute an album, get bands on tours, etc.

Since radiohead doesn't need a record company to distribute their CD's, and since they can hire an independent publicist to promote the album and a booking agent for their tours, they made probably about as much as they would have if they had had a really high royalty rate except without having print up hundreds of thousands of CD's. I suppose the environment wins out here.

How can they be "confident" of only a "minimal margin of error"? There is simply no way for them to get any reliable sampling unless Radiohead is sharing that is. If Radiohead is satsified then so be it, but even with the numbers Comscore is quoting, they must be satisfied.

I think they did a nice thing, totally hooking it up for their fans that may be on a tight budget. They make great music, and they are plenty wealthy, I don't see any issue whatsoever. I think the fact that it wasn't $0.00 on average speaks really highly of the band's supporters. If I could pay nothing for gas at the pump, I would do just that. I'm tempted to buy the special actual CD at some point, they're making it really special.

As to Radiohead, they may have made a little less amount of dollars this way, but these are karmically superior dollars. This is voluntary gifts from fans... what a nice exchange. Though, I'm surprised, I would have expected us Radiohead fans to pay closer to $12.00 on average... it's not like you can get Radiohead in any other way.

And not to forget all the free promotion that they got from this move. Even this site made two articles about the them.

...and paid much more than a regular CD.
My contribution (because I love the band) but mostly to p*** off the RIAA.
Their business model is antique.
GO RADIOHEAD.

They work on a points system when selling CDs. They made about 10x what they would have made going through the normal process of selling CDs.

Actually, I remember a while ago hearing that Christina Agulera made "a whoping 17 million dollars after selling an incredibly 20 million albums". So, through the RIAA, one of their biggest stars was making less than a dollar per album. Assuming Radiohead has a better deal (you'd hope so since they also write the music), it might be safe to assume they make around a dollar per album. If my assumptions are anywhere near correct, them making a measly $2.26 per album sold is a significant increase than they would have otherwise gotten.

artists typically only make 1 or 2 bucks from each album sold anyway. but this way, radiohead doesn't have to have some kind of money grubbing corporation lurching over them, becoming wealthy off of radiohead's talent

I think Radiohead is right, how can they really know how many people downloaded the album after paying for it. Hell 2.26 an album even if the facts are wrong is still a decent amount and I they get the money right away and don't have to beg some company for the check. I downloaded (paid 6 bucks) the album since it was so easy and with no protection I didn't have to worry about what it worked in. Hope more artists see this as a way to get their music to the people and make a decent living