Radiohead addendum: Quick Math

Comscore, an Internet measurment company, released a report earlier this week detailing some data from Radiohead's pay-what-you-can marketing stunt. Here's a quick recap:

1.2 million people visited the site in Oct.
62% of people paid nothing.
38% paid something.
Of that 38%, the average paid was $6.

Coverage of the report has been predictably skewed, with many - including the report's titular jab at freeloading - concluding that the experiment was a failure, that the poor results confirm that the tip jar model just doesn't work.

Here's some quick math:

- 38% of 1.2 million paying $6 = $2,736,000 (almost all of which goes to the band)

Or, factoring in the 62% who paid nothing, the average price people paid was $2.26:
- 1.2 million paying $2.26 = $2,712,000

Hail to the Thief sold 300,000 in its first week. If it continued at that pace for the whole month (which it didn't), that gives about 1.2 million. Or, for even more fun, let's assume that Radiohead could sell as much as Kanye West's Graduation (which it couldn't, Graduation was the highest selling album in 4 years). It moved 957,000 units in it's first week. It moved 226,000 the week after. It continued to decline. Again, 1.2 million in the first month is a good guess (but incredibly high estimate for CD sales).

- 1.2 Million units at $15 - $18,000,000

Of course, not all of that goes to the band. Usually bands get a 10-15% cut. Higher, obviously, for bigger bands.

- 18 million with 15% cut = 2.7 million
- 18 million with 20% cut = 3.6 million

Set aside the fact that Radiohead was doing this as a publicity stunt, some pre-hype for their upcoming CD release. Even at 38% pay what you can, the band made about as much as if they had released it traditionally. Sure, being Radiohead, they may have gotten more than a 20% cut. But, being Radiohead, they probably wouldn't have sold 1.2 million physical copies of their album anyway.