Radiohead: A Study In Music Download Behaviour

21st November 2007

Radiohead, a famous English alternative rock band, reached the height of their popularity in 19992 with their single “Creep”. They recently made the news when they released an album titled “In Rainbows”. The album was only available to fans for download direct from their site:

http://www.inrainbows.com/

What makes this particular music release interesting is the fact that the artists eliminated the need for a major record label to promote their music and that the artist left it up to users to decide how much they wished to pay for the music they were downloading.

Choose What U Pay For Radiohead

ComScore reported that an estimated 1.2 million visitors viewed the Radiohead site during the first 29 days of October, with a significant number downloading the album. According to their research and calculations, only 62 percent of the fans who downloaded the album did not pay for it, with the remaining 38 percent paying an average of £2.93 per download.

How many paid to download Radiohead?48 percent of downloaders from the UK paid for the album, averaging £2.47 per download. A lower percentage (40%) of US downloaders paid for the album, but they paid a higher average of £3.94 per download.

Findings from the ComScore research report have come under fire with Radiohead releasing a statement questioning the validity of the numbers. ComScore replied by defending the validity of sampling as a means of estimating numbers.

Disregarding the absolute correctness of the numbers presented in ComScore’s report, a more important finding from Rodiohead’s experiment has been the likelihood that the future of the music industry is definitely set to change, with a greater number of artists seeking ways to liberate themselves from their record labels and use the power of the Internet to broadcast their music to listeners at a fraction of the cost.


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Discussion on social networks & blogs

  1. Young People Abandoning Email And TV | AccuraCast Search Daily News : 4 February 2009 at 5:03 pm

    [...] Searching and downloading music was the most accessed facility on the internet with 80% of youngsters using it while 73% access chat rooms social networks and message boards. It was also found that 59% of the youth use their mobile phones for entertainment, and the amount of time spent watching television is about one-third less than that spent by other age groups. [...]

  2. Snoop Dogg Launches Album On Mobile | AccuraCast Search Daily News : 23 April 2010 at 6:07 pm

    [...] seem to increasingly recognise the value of connecting with their fans directly. Radiohead launched a very successful album solely online back in 2007. In the past couple of years most artists have built Facebook Pages and Twitter [...]


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