Real Music People

Metallica drummer Lars Ullrich has hinted that they’re thinking of doing what Radiohead popularized by giving away their material online for free. The famed drummer told Rolling Stone magazine that “We’re looking at how we can embrace everything. We want to be as free players as possible. We’ve been observing Radiohead and Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails) and in 27 years or however long it takes for the next record, we’ll be looking forward to everything in terms of possibilities with the internet.” Considering their highly public with Napster, this is one shocking move. I’m sure those Napster people are having a really good laugh at this.

Radiohead isn’t signed to any major record label right now but in the end, it works out for the best. The band decided to release their album via the internet and letting fans pay whatever they wanted for it.

On average, more than 6 out of 10 people who downloaded their new album ‘In Rainbows’ downloaded it for free. Of the people that decided to pay even just a bit for it, the average price paid was around $6. Close to 1.2 million people downloaded the album and if you’re quick with the numbers, that’s a total of $2.736 million.

It may not be as much had they released the album normally but when you take away the money they would have to fork over to a record label, they’d probably make even less than that. It’s a very smart move on their part.