Radiohead tests free album downloading

By Neil Leibundguth
Cardinal Staff

With the recent release of “In Rainbows,” Radiohead may have shaken the record industry to its core.
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Since Oct. 10, 2007, Radiohead has had their newest album available for download on their website. The catch is that they are leaving the price of the album up to each person who downloads it. The consumer has the option to pay any price they want, even a price of zero.

Radiohead and its management has yet to release any information regarding the number of downloads or total sales and will probably not until early next year.

This has not stopped speculations of how well the album sold. The British website www.gigwise.com reported that the band sold 1.2 million copies in the first few days. These numbers come mostly from the pre-orders of the album that took place between the time when the band announced the release, and it was finally available for download.

Early estimates from The Seminal and www.wired.com put the average price per download between 5 and 8 dollars. This would mean that Radiohead could have made anywhere from 6 to 10 million dollars in the first few days after the release of the album. These estimates are based on unnamed “London music insiders,” so the actual numbers may vary when released.

It was reported at www.forbes.com that “In Rainbows” was downloaded illegally 240,000 times using BitTorrent sources on the first day of its release and has now been downloaded illegally over 500,000 times. Some fans chose to use this method even though the band essentially offers the album for free on its own website.

Even though the actual effect on the record industry will not be known until Radiohead releases the sales numbers, many have started to speculate about a possible music revolution.

By distributing the music themselves, the band cuts the record company out of the picture and retains all of the profits instead of just the small percentage they would have normally.

Their experiment also opens up the possibility of bands giving their music away for free since most artists make more money on touring and merchandise than they do from record sales.

One question that remains is whether or not artists who are lesser-known than Radiohead would have as much success using this system. Radiohead also recently signed a deal with XL Records for a physical release of “In Rainbows” to make it available to a larger audience.