In Rainbows is the seventh album by Radiohead that was first released on 10 October 2007 as a digital download where users chose how much they would pay for the album. This was followed by a standard CD release in North America on 1 January 2008.
The significance of the initiative is critical to fully understand the zeitgeist of the web and music industry. The fact that they even tried it, is a huge statement and a line in the sand vis-a-vis the industry. Again, Radiohead clarly demonstrated their avant-gardeness and their trendsetter status, this time not only in music but the way they relate with the industry and their fans.
Warner Chappell’s Head of Business Affairs Jane Dyball revealed that the digital publishing income from the first licence (for the Radiohead pay what you want site) alone dwarfed all the band’s previous digital publishing income and made a “material difference” to Warner Chappell UK’s digital income.
The publisher also confirmed that Radiohead had generated more revenue before ‘In Rainbows’ was physically in stores than they made in total on the previous album ‘Hail To the Thief’. Some may remember that until then, Radiohead has snubbed the likes of iTunes by withholding digital licensing.
The Radiohead In Rainbows experiment was a success for both Warner’s and the band’s perspective. For Warner it served to prove a point that by licensing directly and by offering a genuine one stop shop for licensing the publisher was able to generate far more money than would have been possible. From a marketing and product launch point of view, this experiment wrote a chapter in the book of brand management, social media and digital licensing. Forget about the book, they created the wiki....
Perhaps one of the strenghts of this 'experiment' is that In Rainbows is (IMHO) a better album than Hail to the Thief. So before we all get zapped around and jump to conclusions, the quality of the product is still the founding reason behind the succes of any distribution amd marketng strategy. Nine Inch Nails emerged with a similar free album download strategy with The Slip. The bands obvious niche appeal doesnt allow us to make comparaisons to Radiohead's In Rainbows, but I doubt it levereged as much.
The power of the Radiohead brand is probably the biggest driving force behind an initiative like this. In fact, the In Rainbows experiment probably reinforced even more the trend setting nature of the band. While a début album for a lesser known band probably wouldnt have levereged as much in terms of offline sales, we are clearly witnessed a deep fracture line in the landscape that the web is now making possible.
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