In Rainbows: The Facts

The Music Ally Weblog had a fascinating and detailed piece last week on the results of Radiohead’s experiment with In Rainbows last year. Despite the fact that the album was released for free, there “were three million purchases of In Rainbows, including physical CDs, box-sets, and all downloads - including those from the band’s own website and from other digital music stores”, which is even more interesting when you consider that “their previous three albums sold in the low hundreds of thousands”.

Sales were probably helped by the extra publicity, but fans felt a very direct connection the band when they realised that they alone were responsible for how they reacted to the free release. And many decided that the music was worth something to them.

One interesting footnote to the experiment was that “BitTorrent downloads did indeed greatly outnumber those from Radiohead’s official site”, which would suggest that bands don’t really need to invest heavily in distribution. Get enough loyal fans willing to distribute an album and the work will find its way to the people who want it.