After the huge amount of publicity concerning their decision to offer their "In Rainbows" album on the Internet for whatever fans wanted to pay for it, a number of people felt it was only a borderline success at best, citing that only about 33 percent of those that downloaded the music paid for it.
Now a few months later, they are releasing "In Rainbows" in CD form, and it is set to top the charts in the UK, although admittedly at a slower time of the year. Still, it is expected the album will sell 50,000 copies the first week to take the No. 1 position in the UK.
What's important to me about this what is reveals about the probable future of the music industry, and also how this type of business model works in the digital and physical worlds.
We are definitely entering into a hybrid, cross-platform marketing world, which includes selling across all platforms available. It's not that things like the CD will cease to exist, that's a misunderstanding of what's happening. Instead, it'll end up being one of a number of ways to consume music. It will never go back to the days that it enjoyed being the predominant form of music consumption. Even vinyl is returning in some parts of the world as a viable form of music consumption - specifically with singles.
Translating this to marketing and Internet business in general, no matter what type of market or niche we serve, those able and willing to offer products and services across most of them will be big winners.
A secret experienced online marketers know, is that even with the strong move toward digital, the larger-priced products people are willing to buy is when it's converted to a physical product; things like DVDs, which include multimedia and presentations concerning training, among a number of other things. Put together something like that and you can charge top dollar.
What I'm saying is we live in a hybrid world now. People are using a number of different ways and means to get the information or entertainment they want. Those catering to and meeting those habits and demand will be able to offer products across a wide spectrum of price points. That's how the most successful marketers make their money and run their businesses.
Radiohead is simply an example of understanding the variety of ways people consume content. It's not important that it's music in this case, rather it's important that people are offered a consumption choice and different price points. That's what's driving a lot of the success.
Another side to this, is it's becoming difficult to measure the success of overall marketing campaigns. How do you measure the success of Radiohead? By units sold? By exposure? How viral they went? Digital Sales? Physical Album Sales? Merchandise sales? Tour money?
When we offer marketing campaigns, we may be entering into a process that extends over a period of years now. I'm not just talking about Radiohead selling an occasional album once the buzz wears down, but what the buzz and branding has done as it relates to their future. That can't simply be measured by unit sales any longer, that only tells the short-term story.
Now that Radiohead is an expanding brand, they can go in almost any direction they want to. I wonder if they know that? In your business you need to.
Related Coverage:
Radiohead set to top UK Charts with "In Rainbows" Physical Album
Radiohead Releasing "In Rainbows" Physical Album December 31
Radiohead After the Hype: How'd they do?
Radiohead Releasing Newest Album as Download Only First
Radiohead Taking Charge of their own Destiny
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