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ShareNasty Little Man, who manages Radiohead’s affairs, posted this info about sales from their last album.
* In Rainbows has sold three million copies thus far, a figure that includes downloads from Radiohead.com, physical CDs, a deluxe 2-CD/vinyl box set, as well as sales via iTunes and other digital retailers.
* The In Rainbows deluxe edition sold 100,000 copies via Radiohead fan service W.A.S.T.E.
* Radiohead made more money prior to In Rainbows’ January 2008 physical release than its total take on 2003’s Hail To the Thief.
* The physical release of In Rainbows entered both the US and UK charts at #1 in January, despite having been freely available since October 2007.
Pretty impressive, right? Yes but… it would be interesting to hear who much of the 3 million sold were downloads and how many were CD’s as a measure how the two balanced against each other. Nevertheless, in this digital age, you can’t scoff at sales like that- fewer and fewer acts are able to rake in multi-platinum sales. Even more impressive is that they could have a number one record after offering it up for pay-what-you want. The initial impact of this revolutionary release idea shook up the biz but these sales figures should cement how much of a success it was and why other big acts shouldn’t be scared to take chances like this. No doubt that the pay-what-you-want model got them lots of publicity and sales but the fact that they made more money this time than when the just did a regular release through a major label should give artists some good for thought and make the majors start worrying even more about how uncreative and unprepared they still are to deal with an Internet-age audience.
