Radiohead New Album Sets Aside 'Pay What You Want' Model

Picking nits about the release of sales data: The figure being cited was provided by a comScore, based on independent tracking data. The last line of that article states "A spokesman for Radiohead was not available for comment."

I paid $5, Trent Reznor paid $5000. Unfortunately, that still doesn't come to parity related to our incomes.

The data from Radiohead's experiment is pretty interesting. There is one thing that they did poorly though. Consider the person who downloads the album for $0.00 because they want to hear the music before deciding how much they are willing to pay for it. Radiohead's website did not allow that person to go back and give money after the initial download. The only way to pay any money in that case, was to download the album a 2nd time using a 2nd email address (couldn't download twice with the same email) and include a $$ value for the 2nd download.

Credit me with 2 downloads, one for $0.00 and one for $5.00. If a lot of people did that, it would inflate the total number of downloads and reduce the average paid. I wonder how many people did something similar?

This article is ignorant and extremely biased. The first paragraph totally ignores the fact that consumer behavior radically changes when the price of a good hits zero. People who would otherwise not listen to Radiohead downloaded it -- just because it cost them nothing. The assumption made is that everyone who downloaded it would have ran out and bought it in stores, which is a terribly flawed premise. Did they listen to it once, or did they listen to it a thousand times? They may or may not have bought it, but it's impossible to tell.

I feel as though they did fantastic, considering people had the choice to get the exact same good for free or not free, and an amazing 38% of them paid for it. I'd feel safe betting that if other artists could pull this level of revenue off, they'd be beating the deep cuts taken by the record industry.

This also doesn't take into account the people that paid X for the album and then went on to see them in concert, making them Y more (and I'm pretty sure Y>>X)

It's worth noting that an average price of $6 is a fantastic result for the band. I don't know what their overheads were for the digital distribution, but they were almost certainly much less than what they'd have paid a major label for a traditional CD release, where bands are reckoned to get about 10% of the profits. 10% of $12 is much less than 50% (say) of $6.

I paid $10, and then never listened to it.

I still haven't, actually.

I paid $0, listened to one song decided I didn't like it. If I liked it I would have come back and paid for it. Because the majority of people paid nothing for it doesn't mean lost sales. I never listen to Radiohead, I only downloaded it because of all of the publicity. I always pay/download Trent Reznor's albums when he releases them.

Wouldn't removing all the zeros be a bit dishonest? An average price certainly includes all those that opted to pay $0, otherwise you don't have an accurate and honest representation of the data.

Of course.

If you create something you want it to be available to people who pay for your work. Paying customers and people who pirate leaked albums are separate groups (though there is significant overlap). I should imagine to most people they'd rather that their paying customers got access first, and arranging your own surprise release enforces this, as well as creating a feel of excitement around a release.