RA D IOHE_AD IN/RAINBOWS" continuing discussion thread part V

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xaviMF22

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Successful?

Gigwise has learnt that Radiohead have sold an amazing 1.2million copies of their seventh album ‘In Rainbows.’

The band and their long-term management company Courtyard Management have remained tight lipped about the exact sales figures, seemingly in a bid to add to keep a mysterious air around the album.

But speaking to a source close to the band last night, we’ve discovered that the Oxford band have achieved this monumental sales figure.

Story continues below...


Even if every person who downloaded the album paid just 10 pence, the band will still rake in a massive £120,000. That figure is likely to be higher, with many speculating the average figure will even out at around the £1 mark.

With growing media hype around the release of ‘In Rainbows’, these unprecedented sales figures look certain to keep on rising. If they finally announce a world tour, audience figures are expected to be higher too.

Thom Yorke and co. will cash in again when the payments clear for the ‘In Rainbows’ box set which are on sale for £40 a go.

As expected, Radiohead are the clear victors of this radical way of releasing their album. Their success should prompt other big names to follow suit.

http://www.gigwise.com/news/37670/exclusive-radiohead-sell-12million-copies-of-in-rainbows


yea Radiohead pwned :drool:
 
martha said:


In whose book is 120,000 pounds massive? :scratch:

I was wondering if it was typo!

I love In Rainbows so much I'm suddenly feeling there's about $80 burning a hole in my pocket. I may have to spend it. :crack:
 
Jesus, I left at 5 and you guys just kept going and going... I managed to read several pages of the last thread but it was too much...

I'm on my 8th spin right now and I haven’t gotten bored of it yet so that's a good sign.

House Of Cards is still my favorite. :drool: it's so haunting...

Also, I agree with Atomic Bono's comment several hours ago that this feels like one of Radiohead’s "warmer" albums, it's very processed to be sure but there is an organic feel which I haven’t heard since The Bends. HTTT had a more organic feel as well but it was much grittier...
 
The first day I owned HTTT I drove to Albuquerque and from a clear sky these enormous raindrops began falling on my windshield during a particular song. I thought that was weird.

So yesterday, the first day of owning In Rainbows, I drove to Abq to see The Shins and there was a sudden rainstorm and then a beautiful rainbow appeared.

True story. :shrug:

I also drove to Abq the first day of owning Kid A but I don't remember anything special happening except I cried.
 
Just had a listen to the new album. My first impressions are extremely positive and I'll definitely buy it if/when it is released on a traditional CD, :up:

Radiohead are kinda in the same frustrating basket as Arcade Fire for me - I think I'd be absolutely fanatical about them if only I could love their respective lead singers' vocals more. Thom Yorke's got a gorgeous voice with lots of subtlety and nuance, but as a vocalist he rarely if ever connects with me in any meaningful way and his upper register often has a grating, mosquito-buzz quality that makes me hate otherwise great songs like Idioteque. The new album has a few irritating vocal moments, but overall I found Thom at his most listenable since The Bends.

Musically, I think the album is amazing; it flows together perfectly like a true album should and it's full of lovely, interesting textures that should only get better with further listens. What surprised me the most is that there's real warmth to the music and some songs have a vibe that is almost romantic, and warm/romantic are the descriptions I've never really associated with Radiohead. So in that sense I think that the album is definitely a change, which is great.
 
Some perspective on that 1.2 million copies figure:

That's for just 1 day, and it's more than any U2 album has ever sold in its first WEEK.

Also consider that when Kid A debuted at #1, it was an extremely slow week for releases, and I think they managed to do it with only around 100,000 copies. (when it normally takes 2 or 3 times that to top the chart). Again, that's for a WEEK.

Pretty impressive.

Obviously not having to pay anything, or pay much for it helped so many copies go out the door, but we'll know more about that when the average amount is confirmed. I suspect this is also a good model because not having to leave your house to buy music the day it's released is one that's going to appeal to many music buyers.
 
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ok, so out of 1.2 million copies shipped how many were sold for a standard price (lets say $9.00) and how many were given away or were at below cost I wonder?

I realize since there is no record label and no shipping/production/packaging/promotion costs the profit margin is much higher but still...

Wow.. look at me, sounding all corporate… :wink:
 
Well, that's why they figure the average would come out to about £1 per download. If that ends up being the average, that's over £1 million right there.

Pretty nice rake if you ask me.
 
If you basically give your album away for free, I don't think it's legitimate to say that you "sold" so and so many copies.
 
Good point but they aren’t actually saying it, it's more speculation at this point than anything else...

On top of that RH do not strike me as really caring all that much at the end of the day.

Just another sad example of the need to quantify sales to equate success...
 
Review from Boston Globe:

Radiohead's revenge is sweet

By Joan Anderman, Globe Staff | October 11, 2007

The Internet went a little bit bananas yesterday at 1:30 a.m., as did the blogosphere, when fans began downloading Radiohead's new album, "In Rainbows." The digital-only release was supposed to launch at 7 p.m. (midnight in London), but the activation codes arrived 6 1/2 hours late. Needless to say the delay hardly diminished the cultural significance or revolutionary business potential built into the release of Radiohead's seventh album, which is being offered to fans for whatever price they choose to pay.

Nobody knows how many pre-orders were taken or how much fans opted to pony up, but anecdotal evidence suggests the first number exceeds 4 million and the second hovers around $10, the typical cost of a digital album. Every cent goes to the band, which is no longer affiliated with a record label, and the timing couldn't be better: smack on the heels of the recording industry's victory in its first lawsuit against a music downloader.

It's a brilliant goodwill gesture, although the pay-what-you-want model probably isn't viable in the broader marketplace. Only a band with Radiohead's large, devoted fan base and reliably stellar catalog could pull it off. But here and now, in a perfect storm of credible artist, adoring public, and hostile industry, the psychology is sheer genius. Whatever you paid for "In Rainbows," it's going to be worth it because you, the newly empowered consumer, have assigned the value.

The real beauty is that "In Rainbows" is a wonderful, absorbing album. It falls on the subdued side for Radiohead; the lion's share of these 10 tracks are more contemplative than raucous, filled with strings and finger-picked guitars and Thom Yorke's voice front and center instead of buried in a toxic mix. But subdued doesn't mean laid-back. Radiohead finds intensity wherever its members' collective experimental streak leads them, and this ruminative new album is no exception.

Dry, crisp percussion and Yorke's eerie coo kick off "15 Steps," a crackling, sinuous tune that builds to an anxious peak and could have been lifted from sessions for "The Eraser," the singer's solo album. Next comes "Bodysnatchers," built around a thick tangle of distorted guitars and a frantic beat; it's going to be positively epic onstage.

And that's pretty much it for the rockers. From here on the album swims inward - and at the same time outward, toward listeners who have been alienated by the band's devotion to abstract experimentation on the past several albums. "Nude" is a dreamy waltz, a futuristic blues ornamented with virtual choirs and space-age gauze. "Reckoner" flows like soulful benediction, all shimmering rhythms and burnished strings. "All I Need" builds from a rumbling keyboard meditation into a soaring symphony, but the skewed chamber pop of "Faust Arp" asks nothing of the listener but to fall under its lovely, aching spell. That alone is a novelty for Radiohead, a band that in recent years has demanded a rigorous level of intellectual engagement from its audience.

"In Rainbows" is concerned with love, its gentle dissonances and endless, minute contortions. "I'd be crazy not to follow where you lead," Yorke sings on "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi," following fluid guitar lines into a watery soundscape that grows murkier and murkier, until the singer hits bottom and is left wondering how to escape. "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" toggles gorgeously between anxiety and euphoria; Yorke rushes to deliver his questioning, quick-witted lyrics, and they tumble out list-like, like so many puzzling pieces of information.

The piano ballad "Videotape," set at the Pearly Gates, begins simply and then grows misshapen over its 4 1/2 minutes, as a drum materializes with an offbeat wallop and uneasy textures begin to bleed into the song. "No matter what happens next, you shouldn't be afraid/ Because I know today has been the most perfect day I've ever seen," sings Yorke, just before the beat starts skipping around and the tune breaks into chunks that fall out of synch. Time becomes unreliable, harmony vanishes, and the song leads quietly into chaos. But Radiohead knows its way around the void, and on "In Rainbows," it sounds beautiful and true.

Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com. For more on music, visit boston.com/ae/ music/blog.

http://www.boston.com/ae/music/cd_reviews/articles/2007/10/11/radioheads_revenge_is_sweet/
 
I drove to Abq to see The Shins


Sorry to deviate, but I want to hear about this.


1.2 million is insane. I'll be very interested to see the figures of how much they actually made. It surprisingly seems that the vast majority of people I've seen post in various places at least paid something for it. Calculate in the box set sales, and you should have a pretty interesting figure.
 
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Can I just say that I love the way you can hear the pick scrape against the guitar strings in Nude?

I've had this on repeat for so long my ears hurt from having the headphones on.
 
oh there's a new thread... i posted in the other one cuz i left it up from last night :lol:

here wuz my post:

LemonMelon said:

:up:

The most heartening thing about In Rainbows, besides the fact that it may represent the strongest collection of songs Radiohead have assembled for a decade, is that it ventures into new emotional territories: their last album, 2003's Hail to the Thief, had its moments, but it was scarred by the sense that the band's famed gloominess was starting to tip into self-parody and petulance. Here, there's wit - at 15 Step's conclusion, Yorke's patented end-is-nigh keening is undercut by a childrens' chorus merrily crying "hey!" - and warmth. With its strings and swooning guitars, Nude sounds lushly romantic. So does All I Need, which, moreover, ends in a fantastic, life-affirming crescendo. Witty, romantic, life-affirming: you don't need to be an expert in the minutae of their back catalogue to know that these are not adjectives readily associated with Radiohead.

That's what I said! :wink:

I'm still madly in love with this album. it almost makes me cry it's so good. is that bad?

also lazarus I totally agree with you on the U2 thing... they get credit for changing their sound with Achtung Baby, but Zooropa and Passengers are pretty much ignored, and Pop is somehow construed as a total failure (even though the initial reviews were mostly positive...).

i mean, come on, U2 had balls to release songs like Numb and Lemon as singles which sounded nothing like their typical sound or even their "new" AB sound. And the first time I heard Kid A I thought "wow...Passengers." I do agree with xavi though that had U2 released it under their name it likely would have gotten more attention...though like I said Zooropa was pretty different but it's not considered a classic by any of the critics now, or even really considered at all :shrug: such is the way of things. Radiohead sometimes gets too much credit for innovation, but they deserve all the praise they get for this album.
 
The pick scrape is pretty cool, but I'm pretty pissed off with some of the production.

It seems to me that the producers just didn't care to work that hard on cleaning the album up. For instance, they must have recorded near an elementary school because I can hear kids screaming in the background of 15 Step. That's just lazy.

:shifty:
 
^lol

AtomicBono said:
That's what I said! :wink:

I'm still madly in love with this album. it almost makes me cry it's so good. is that bad?

no, not at all, it gives me goosbumps and I havent had that happen to me much when listening to a Radiohead album before, as I said before I had no idea they were interested in making music like this...
 
I heard the album 5 times on a bose sounddock. Pretty good listening. Then I heard the album once on headphones while trying to read in bed. Normally, I can manage both no problem. After 40 minutes, I only read 4 pages. My head kept melting to the beautiful sounds.
 
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