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Comment by mjijackson | Hacker News Reader

> 1) Every artist who's made an online release of their content in a desirable format (without DRM, etc) has seen sales in proportion to their general popularity. Every single one, without even one exception.

That's not true. Radiohead pulled the plug on their In Rainbows experiment after only 3 months in 2007. They decided to go the more traditional route instead. Why would they (an incredibly popular band) do something like that if sales were truly in proportion to their popularity?

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What you are claiming is not true. Here are some sources that refute your claim:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Rainbows#Sales_and_chart_pla...

In October 2008, a report from Warner Chappell revealed that although most people paid nothing for the download, pre-release sales were more profitable than the total money from sales of Hail to the Thief. The report also stated that the discbox sold 100,000 copies.

And yet they haven't repeated this with subsequent releases. Why not? I really don't know. My guess is that they think this was a one-time gimmick and not a repeatable model.

I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong.

Do you have a link for this "pulled the plug" assertion? It's my understanding that Radiohead always intended to release the CD in stores all along because "some fans would not have the technological means to obtain the new material." according to Wikipedia.

Yes, they do still believe in traditional distribution to a point (after giving it away for three months), but I think it's unfair to characterise it as a failure.

Failure is a subjective term. Radiohead released their next album at a fixed price with a rollout into traditional formats as well.

He's suggesting that because Radiohead eventually took down the page, the experiment was a failure. He's conveniently ignoring the fact that their online opt-in pay system generated more revenue than their last published album before they dismantled it, demonstrating that demand/revenue in the new model exceeded the old.

I do have a link to cite: http://www.nme.com/news/radiohead/40444

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