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U2 Manager Says Radiohead <i>In Rainbows</i> experiment "backfired"

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U2 Manager Says Radiohead <i>In Rainbows</i> experiment "backfired"
The competition to be Biggest Band in the World must be pretty fierce, so you can forgive U2 manager Paul McGuiness a little if he wants to downplay all the positive press heading Radiohead's way of late. McGuiness, while talking to BBC 6 Music about the plan of attack for U2's upcoming album, mentioned that Radiohead's pay-what-you-will model for In Rainbows in October had “to some extent backfired”:
"Even though it was available on their own website for no money at all, if that was what you preferred to pay -- 60 to 70 per cent of the people who downloaded the record stole it anyway even though it was available for free."

Keep in mind that that 60%-70% figure is almost certainly exaggerated. Wired estimated that the ratio of In Rainbows website/BitTorrent downloads during the first week of release was 1.2 million/500k, which would mean that less than a third of the downloaders used piracy.Though that doesn't include downloads from other P2P networks, it also doesn't include the fans who would eventually pay for a hard copy of the album, either.

 

U2's new album, which will come out in October, will be released in the same old-same old manner, as McGuiness noted that U2 "still sell a lot of actual CDs." The band, however, "will obviously work with whatever technology is available to make the release of the new record as interesting as possible.”

 

McGuiness has a long history of being conservative with regard to the realities of new media, having called ad-supported music "beneath musicians" and calling on ISPs to blacklist illegal downloaders. [Gigwise] 

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I love U2, but their stubbornness could end up being their downfall.

/site_media/uploads/images/users/BrandonRoss/Photo 118.jpgBrandonRoss

I am not really shocked to hear McGuiness on this. He consistently makes himself and U2 whom he represents to look like retards. Seriously, people stole it even though it was free? eh, where did they steal it from? did they walk into shops and take it off the shelves? I'm getting really pissed off with this argument. What's wrong with a quick stop bittorrent solution, I mean the industry has had how many years now to get its 20th century business models out of the clouds and into a 21st century where music has lost it's value as a product when there's so much consumerism.

How many TV series must there be of X factor, or american idol to make the executives happy that they're making as much money as possible? The industry is losing so much money due to music that is produced these days being available for free from musicians who make really love what they do and get music out to their fans and then go play live and make money.
Lets call it the old fashioned way, where everything today is like the radio.

You turn on the TV and the free music channels churn out what's number 1 that week. you turn on the radio and it's the number 1 that week. you're at work, you're anywhere and the MEDIA basically tells you that track is amazing so you must buy it, actually it isn't amazing, and no I wont buy it, but I'll find a way of getting it if I really must (find a friend with the Tape/CD/Bittorrent file - delete as decade appropriate)

I hear apple are trying to make their itunes store a one stop heaven, but it wont because music cannot be valued at 99p a track (I'm in the UK) I wouldn't pay that for an inferior quality MP4 (which compared to an uncompressed CD is daylight robbery which you can download from the internet) Yes I'm a techie, I despise DRM, so should everyone.

So what's wrong with the one stop bittorrent site which the industry adopts to actually make things go in their favor? Oh that's right they don't care about fans, they care about their cut.

Elliot Comber

Why is U2 stubborn? Did Bono say something or was it their manager? I love how if anyone says anything remotely negative about Radiohead everyone gets all flustered. Pitchfork is probably constructing a full-fledged attack on U2 as we speak.

/site_media/uploads/images/users/dukkookim/6460_1130716601218_1626340558_309884_1280450_njpg.jpgdukkookim

Even if Radiohead gave away the album for free to 60-70% of the people who downloaded, they profited hand over fist on everyone else who paid for it.

As opposed to U2, who will get a buck-fifty for each album they sell, while the rest goes to Universal. Good call, McGuinness.

Um...

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