Radiohead’s new album, for now, is only being sold online by downloads and the band has allowed the people to decide how much to pay. Here are some of the results:
Between Oct. 1 and Oct. 29, about 1.2 million people visited the Web site the band set up for fans to download the album, comScore said Monday. The research firm did not say how many people in its study actually bought the album.
Among U.S. residents, about 40 percent who downloaded the album paid to do so. Their average payment was $8.05, the firm said.
Some 36 percent of the fans outside the U.S. who downloaded the album opted to pay; on average, those fans paid $4.64, according to the study.
I’d be quite interested in more details–what other countries are included and what are the breakdown of the countries (it’s interesting that US residents were more likely to pay something and paid more than people outside the US, but how does the US compare to other individual countries). I would also like to know how many people actually have downloaded the album and how that compares to their other albums in the same time period (if more people get the album then this might work even if the average paid is less, especially if Radiohead makes more money per album). This is a great opportunity to see if this new distribution method would work.
Filed under: Free Markets, Music, World, nation
