Comments on: Radiohead's Web venture spooks Wall Street

Two analysts downgrade Warner Music Group and say artist defections, "free culture," and spiraling CD revenue mean more losses for record industry.

[k4v3h]

These statistics don't say much.

I get that 62 % didn't pay. It doesn't say anything about the users who downloaded the album twice/multiple (for trying it out) times and paid for one copy? It doens't say the number of people actually downloaded the album on release day? It doesn't say anything about users in different international demographics and finally all this says absolutely nothing about the users that are "internet pirates" who would in case this service didn't exists would have gone to file sharing sites (bit torrent sites) for this album and never gotten the chance to pay. I would wait and hear statistics from radiohead themselves.
The only mistake radiohead did was to not use bit torrent file sharing themselves besides regular file distribution. The server load must be off the charts because off this.

[ramudd]

$15 sale / less than $1 cost to produce

I can see why the RIAA or whatever it is , it upset. Their cash cow is leaking milk all over the place. The cost to produce a CD is almost nothing and they sell them and get mad when we share them. Good for Radiohead. Never heard of them but at least their fans got what they paid for. Now there's a difference.

[GGGlen]

It's all Steve Jobs fault

'Cos that's what the whiny music execs tell me.

:-P

[starcannon]

Madonna, Radio Head, NiN

They see the writing on the wall, and so do the Big Labels.
As artists they have the power to do something pro-active.
The labels however, now being nothing more than distributors, their production value has greatly diminished in the digital age, their studios are relics because artists can put their studio in a laptop bag and take it with them. There are some pro-active approaches that the record labels could take, but these guys are used to being the final word, all they know how to do is react, not pro-act.

Big Music is dead, Long live Rock.