Radiohead Got ‘Absolutely Zero’ From EMI Digital, ‘Done Really Well’ Online-Only

topics

Radiohead Got ‘Absolutely Zero’ From EMI Digital, ‘Done Really Well’ Online-Only

With In Rainbows’ digital-only running having ended and some time having elapsed since Radiohead’s departure from EMI’s Parlophone, Thom Yorke’s lips are getting looser on how the experiment went - and why the band left its label.

- From the latest Wired: “In terms of digital income, we’ve made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever. It’s partly due to the fact that EMI wasn’t giving us any money for digital sales. All the contracts signed in a certain era have none of that stuff.” Advice to new artists: “Don’t sign a huge record contract that strips you of all your digital rights, so that when you do sell something on iTunes you get absolutely zero.”

- And from this morning’s Today programme: “We have a moral justification in what we did in the sense that the majors and the big infrastructure of the music business has not addressed the way artists communicate directly with their fans. Not only do they get in the way, but they take all the cash.” Yorke refuted earlier reports of 1.2 million digital In Rainbows sales, adding: “It’s been a really nice surprise and we’ve done really well out of it.” But now, as was planned pretty much all along, the album is retailing on CD - Yorke said it’s “really important to have an artefact as well”.

Related Stories

Robert Andrews

@robertandrews Jan 2, 2008 11:25 AM ET

Posted In: Entertainment, Music, Companies, EMI

latest headlines

elliotp

duh. they didn't get any $$ from their label because the contract was over, and wasn't done through emi, but with their own gusto.

metroknow

I too am a long time devotee of Radiohead. I'm not one of those folks who long for the Pablo Honey days (though I have been on the radiohead train since then), as if the music then was the purest form of Radiohead expression - I love them precisely for their evolution and the expansion of ideas into places most bands can never venture successfully.

I think this move was absolutely brilliant. On the amount of money made, most estimates these days are anywhere from $8 million (US) to $13 million just on the download, which is fistfuls more than they would ever make through a major label. People outside the music industry generally have no idea how little artists make from recordings (and the industry keeps it quiet of course); some bands net the equivelent of less than a dollar per album, and that's only after a base of 1/2 million units are sold (of which the record company keeps it all).

They make their money through touring and merchandising. In fact, many bands have to license their own songs to be able to perform them in concert—the label owns the rights, so to play their own songs, they have to "buy back" the right to perform them. Sounds fair, eh?

Andrew: they didn't actually keep it secret - they outlined the details when they released the digital download. On the "Absurd" comment, its actually the other way around - by all accounts they made vastly more, and don't care to discuss their personal finances (they are personal of course, since no label is involved ;)); Was it a marketing stunt? Yes of course, but with a moral undertone perhaps. On "artefact," I don't know what that means either really. But I have to say, having been one of the folks who downloaded the album several times for next to nothing, my plan all along has been to buy the media when it arrived (the "cheap" version) because the download quality is poor relative to the physical disc.

The big factor that is overlooked here is the tremendous volume of free advertising that has been done on their behalf because of all of the media coverage. Radiohead is a worldwide household name, even more so than before, because they made a gigantic splash with a bold move. THAT is probably their biggest win of all.

Andrew A. Peterson

Since this story broke, I keep wondering what Radiohead is thinking in keeping their plan to do regular retail a secret until now.
Also, I wonder why they are keeping the numbers on the pay-what-want digital release a secret. Saying that 1.2 million is "absurd," certainly implies that it's a vast over-estimate. How vast?
There was a sense of activism to the whole release and now even mention of a "moral justification," but the secrecy seems self-serving. Was the whole thing a marketing stunt? A failed experiment?

Also, there always was an artifact: the $80 "Diskbox" version of the album that you couldn't pay-what-you-want for. So saying there needs to be an artifact, is Yorke really saying "there needs to be a <em>cheap</em> artifact." or "there needs to be an artifact available to people who <em>don't</em> buy things online…" or what?

I love Radiohead. This is such an uncertain time for Music distribution, and I can understand if the first steps we take into the unknown future are awkward ones, and to an extent, Radiohead are already heroes for doing what they have done, but all the vague language and doublespeak is a little annoying.