Building Ambisonia.com

and I’m excited!

So Radiohead released their latest album “www.inrainbows.com” online. Their idea was “pay what you like”.

So how has it panned out?

Well, the TimesOnline did a little survey (3000 people). Their figures indicate that the average price paid was around 8 USD…. and that 1/3 of people paid nothing.

Forbes  say that there were 1.2 million ‘transactions’ before the release date (people pre-ordering). On that fact alone, Radiohead have made at least USD9.6 million.

Now, I’m going to say that these figures are out by almost a factor of 10. Lets say they have made $1 million.  Take out the cost of the website, say USD50,000. Take out the cost of printing the Box Set, say an other USD50,000.  It still a roaring success.

Ofcourse, Radiohead are riding off a reputation which has been built for years, and cost a lot of money to build. But that doesn’t remove from the glorious conclusion:

We dont need to decide between free downloads and paid downloads. We can have both… and still have sufficient income. We dont need to battle piracy to protect income.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is perhaps the beginning of the paradigm shift.