Case study - Radiohead In Rainbows - Overview

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Contents

Who?

Very brief description of the person, company, or organisation behind the project.

Open IP projects

What is the project? What does it do? What creative works is it giving away? Or how could it be said to be using 'open IP'? Are they using Creative Commons licences? GPL? Copyleft? Copyright?

What is the business model?

How is the project or business earning money from giving creative works away?

References

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Relevant links

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  • Article Title:Radiohead Hides Several Pots of Gold 'In Rainbows'
    • Author:Eliot Van Buskirk
    • Publication:Wired
    • Date:10 Oct 2007
    • URL:http://blog.wired.com/music/2007/10/radioheads-in-r.html
    • Comment: on the musical merits rather than business model, but interesting to note that Radiohead refuse to sell the tracks individually by iTunes i.e. they are trying to maintain the album as an artform / unit of distribution.
  • Article Title:Snap Judgment: Radiohead's 'In Rainbows'
    • Author:Whitney Pastorek
    • Publication:PopWatch
    • Date:10 Oct 2007
    • URL:http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2007/10/snap-judgment-r.html
    • Comment: All on the music, except for informal discussion of how much blogger and readers were prepared to pay. Great that Radiohead have brought this discussion to the fore, with people now merrily discussing the merits of stealing from oink or wherever vs voluntarily paying.
  • Article Title:Study: Free beats fee for Radiohead's 'In Rainbows'
    • Author:Greg Sandoval
    • Publication:News.com
    • Date:05 Nov 2007
    • URL:http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9811013-7.html
    • Comment: expert commentary based on the ComScore numbers (which we now know are bunkem), suggesting that cannot assess success before money-generating lifespan (2 years) is complete. Estimates $9m - $20m (across publishing and recording, worldwide, based on sales of 3-4 million units) per album through EMI. Question is, will they do better by themselves?
  • Article Title:A blockbuster for Radiohead's "In Rainbows"?
    • Publication:Machinist
    • Date:11 Oct 2007
    • URL:http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2007/10/11/radiohead_sales/
    • Comment: 1.2 million downloads in 4 or 5 days (unconfirmed figures). They are no normal band! But, for context, Kanye West's 'Graduation' (recent blockbuster, and these numbers are confirmed by Nielsen Soundscan) SOLD 957,000 in one week. Record of the Day polled 3k purchases, which indicated average price between $4 - $8. Which is very strong compare to the cut they get from EMI (see above - $3 - $5 for every sale - both publishing and recording), and iTunes (around $1.5 per album).
  • Article Title:What Radiohead's In Rainbows says about the state of the music industry
    • Author:Tunequest
    • Publication:tunequest.org
    • Date:02 Oct 2007
    • URL:http://www.tunequest.org/what-radioheads-in-rainbows-says-about-state-of-the-music-industry/20071002/
    • Quote: "Blogpulse shows a more than 1300% increase in the number of posts mentioning the band from September 29 to October 1. Of course, a new Radiohead album is big news, especially after a four year wait, but the real source of conversation is the band’s decision to allow variable pricing of In Rainbows. Much of the commentary revolves around how this is a shot across the bow of the record labels." > Fantastic promotional win. Notes a further benefit of going without EMI is added security (less people to leak) and greater artistic control (MH: some artists very much enjoy direction, especially early in their careers).
  • Article Title:33 1/3: Radiohead's In Rainbows
    • Author:Scott Plagenhoef
    • Publication:PowellsBooks.Blog
    • Date:19 Oct 2007
    • URL:http://www.powells.com/blog/?p=2544
    • Comment: points out there is a choice between digital version and also the "elaborate and expensive duluxe edition", which will not be released til December and will cost £40 (!), and also introduces notion of the 'official leak' i.e. they're directly communicating with fans whilst accepting these new cultural terms: "Radiohead's planned and publicized leak makes everyone gatekeepers and early adopters. They're constructing an event — listening to their record is a global communal experience rather than an isolated one — and stripping away the rush to get to it first. As Belle and Sebastian fans knew a decade earlier, the process of acquiring music is strengthened when it accompanies building friendships with other like-minded listeners. We want to have social experiences with music — it's been communal for centuries. Thankfully, Radiohead seem to understand that even if its commercial strength has eroded to where it's worth literally nothing, the bigger shame would be if its social and cultural power disintegrates as well."
  • Article Title:Radiohead In Rainbows
    • Author:Jeff Klingman
    • Publication:Prefix
    • Date:10 Oct 2007
    • URL:http://www.prefixmag.com/reviews/cds/R/radiohead/in-rainbows/3372
    • Quote: "It was a marketing scheme so satisfying that it felt like art. And more than any single that could have been taken from In Rainbows, the band's seventh studio album, it served to position the musicians exactly where they wanted to be: once again pushing the envelope." Rest is musical criticism.
  • Article Title:Study: Free beats fee for Radiohead's 'In Rainbows'
  • Article Title:Radiohead Deny Reports That 60 Percent Of Fans Paid Nothing For In Rainbows
    • Author:Gil Kaufman
    • Publication:MTv
    • Date:10 Oct 2007
    • URL:http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1573841/20071108/radiohead.jhtml
    • Quotes: "Radiohead said the comScore data was "wholly inaccurate" and that it "in no way reflected definitive market intelligence or, indeed, the true success of the project." To date, neither Radiohead nor their U.S. publicist, Steve Martin, have agreed to discuss any of the financial aspects of the download scheme, including how many copies were sold or how much fans paid on average.

Denying that the average non-freeloader fan paid only $6 for the download, as suggested by comScore's report, the group's representatives also stressed in the statement that "as the album could only be downloaded from the band's Web site, it is impossible for outside organizations to have accurate figures on sales."

ComScore senior analyst Andrew Lipsman strongly defended his company's results when asked about the band's claims. "We're confident in our data," he said. "There's a minimal margin of error based on the size of the sample we used and the narrow range of values."

  • Article Title:Radiohead's 'In Rainbows' not quite up to the band's standard
  • Article Title:Collection - Radiohead: In Rainbows
    • Author:Tom Johnson
    • Publication:BC blogcritics magazine
    • Date:11 Oct 2007
    • URL:http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/10/11/021844.php
    • Comment: its not free (there's actually a 45p service charge)! Questions whether they have really shifted paradigm, or just taken advantage of fans to the tune of several million by better-managing pre-release stage.
  • Article Title:Radiohead Day arrives as reaction floods in
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