Radiohead earns more by distributing their music freely
Not too surprising anyway. I read in Libertad Digital (in Spanish) that Radiohead made their new album available to download on their web site. They only asked to pay what one considered a fair price. During the first week, it was downloaded 1,2 million times, which is more than the sum of the first week sales of their previous three albums. Moreover, the average price paid per download was $8. This is much more than the average $1-$2 that a band usually gets per copy sold, after the discography and distribution channels has ripped most of the income off. So, they have roughly multiplied their income by 20, just by removing the middleman and by allowing free downloads of their music, without counting the greater number of fans they are getting access to. Not bad for an industry claiming to be disappearing.
And this is only a secondary part of their business; otherwise they would not have left it open to fan’s unpredictable reaction. The core business for any band remains in its concerts and merchandising. Madonna understands this perfectly, when she decided to break apart from Warner, the discography behind all her albums so far, and sign with Live Nation, a concert promoter. The music industry is adapting to new models, and it is going faster than many think.
