ORIGINAL #2 RADIOHEAD "IN RAINBOWS" PRE - RELEASE STRATEGY

RADIOHEAD "IN RAINBOWS"

PRE - RELEASE STRATEGY

Hello, everyone again, today, in the communicator's lens, we want to talk about how the music industry or some of our artists, favorite bands have used the Internet platforms, and some creative marketing strategies to get directly to their fans and make the release of their albums a media milestone.

Well, this is the case of "In Rainbows" seventh album of the English rock band Radiohead, which was released for the first time on October 10, 2007, as a digital download from the band's website. The curious thing is that the musicians encouraged their fans to "pay what you want", even nothing for the download of the album. The fans, and of course everyone who had access to the internet had the privilege of downloading the complete “in rainbows" album, at the price that they wanted to. This happened in an 8 week period of time, shortly after they physically released their album and commercialized it at the established price.

                       Radiohead (from left to right):

                  Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Colin Greenwood,

                         Ed O'Brien and Phil Selway.

Let's call this an act of generosity, or a marketing strategy? ... Anyway, I will tell you what happened next. This was one of the first actions like this by a major music group, and of significant importance in all the world's headlines and that provoked controversy about this concept of "pay what you want." In addition, it attracted important figures in the world and even months later, when the disc was published in physical format, they sold more than three million copies.

 "In Rainbows" entered the Billboard chart, the U.K. Album Chart and the United World Chart at No. 1 and went on to sell millions worldwide. According to Radiohead's publisher, Warner Chappell, "In Rainbows" made more money before the album was physically released, than the total sales for the band's previous album, "Hail to the Thief." Let’s describe this situation as making money by giving an album for free.

You know everyone, in this era everything is about how well you interact with the groundswell, but now I'm wondering, what does something extraordinary mean? Something extraordinary is something that catches our attention and that stands out for being out of the ordinary. You will see how the book by Li and Bernoff says, that the clarity of your objectives will make or break your strategy. Success depends on a beacon to go to - a reason to enter the groundswell. That makes me think that this band used and uses not only the pre-release strategy as a way to attract the attention of their fans, and new listeners, but also uses the groundswell to be effective when it comes to showing their music. Even if it means risking a negative result, but that's what success is all about: risking it.

Radiohead is not the only artist that has done this. Beyonce, with her album "Lemonade," was another artist that promoted her music through online platforms and let us listen for free, and also previewed what she was doing musically.

Interesting, right? ... the idea of making money by giving your album to your fans for free ... and what do you think about digital sales? Digital formats are becoming commonplace, the target audience is young. If you are a big fan of Radiohead, please write your favorite song below in the comments! 

Thank you all!