Few fans pay up for Radiohead digital download

LONDON:The marketing coup scored by Radiohead when the band invited fans to choose what, if anything, they would pay for a digital download of their latest album may not have been the commercial success some hoped.

Just 38 per cent of the people downloading the album, In Rainbows , paid any more than the £0.45 (€0.65) handling charge, according to ComScore, a digital measurement group, which based its conclusions on a poll of its two million-strong global database of consumers.

Of those paying something, the average amount paid was €8 - well below the price the band could have charged for a CD or a digital album on Apple's iTunes. Analysts were split yesterday, however, over whether this counted as a success or a failure.

Industry bodies such as the IFPI estimate that consumers around the world typically download 20 tracks illegally for every digital download they pay for, suggesting that Radiohead has done better than most in beating the threat of illegal file-sharing.

Industry commentators noted Radiohead would not have to share whatever revenue they received with a record label or other third party, and that Comscore's analysis did not report how many fans had opted to buy the €60 box set, which the band also offered.

Comscore gave no estimate of how many people had downloaded the album, but said 1.2 million people visited Radiohead's website in the first 29 days of October. Its analysis revealed big differences in the amounts paid in the US and elsewhere. While 40 per cent of American downloaders paid for the album, compared with 36 per cent outside the US, international fans paid far less - an average of $4.64 (€3.16), compared with $8.05 (€5.49) in the US.

Radiohead's Oxford-based management company said last month that the digital release was predominantly a promotional tactic to boost sales of a compact disc of the album, which is due out in January.

Guy Hands, of Terra Firma, EMI's new private equity owner, had instructed its staff to see the Radiohead experiment as a model of the innovation needed in the struggling music business.

This week, EMI released seven old Radiohead albums as a box set and on a USB memory stick.