Warner Chappell will today reveal details of their view of the Radiohead licensing experiment at the “You Are in Control” conference in Iceland, including total sales figures of more than three million for ‘In Rainbows’.The UK-based branch of the publishing company licensed all digital rights including master recording rights and image and likeness rights on behalf of the band in a groundbreaking move for them as well as the band.Today Warner Chappell’s Head of Business Affairs Jane Dyball will reveal that the digital publishing income from the first licence (for the Radiohead pay what you want site) alone dwarfed all the band’s previous digital publishing income and made a “material difference” to Warner Chappell UK’s digital income.The publisher will also confirm that Radiohead had made more money before ‘In Rainbows’ was physically released than they made in total on the previous album ‘Hail To the Thief’. It should be pointed out that Radiohead’s existing digital income was of course low, because they had withheld licensing the likes of iTunes.The topline figure, though, is that there were three million purchases of In Rainbows, including physical CDs, box-sets, and all downloads – including those from the band’s own website and from other digital music stores.The presentation represents the first time that the ‘official’ view of the Radiohead experiment has been heard. The fact that Warner Chappell played such a pivotal role in the initiative has been rather lost in all the noise which has since accompanied Radiohead’s daring and genuinely ground breaking campaign. Indeed the publisher has been almost Radiohead-like by staying so quiet.But the first anniversary of the release has provided an opportunity for some more light to be shed on the initiative. Jane Dyball will this morning give a keynote speech to the “You Are in Control” conference in Iceland to which Music Ally was given exclusive access.Really there seems little doubt that the experiment was a success from both Warner’s and the band’s perspective. For Warner it served to prove a point that by licensing directly (ie outside the collecting society network) and by offering a genuine one stop shop for licensing (ie combining all the digital rights into one offer from a single entity) the publisher was able to generate far more money for both themselves and the band than would have been possible under the traditional system.Good news for them but bad news for collecting societies such as the MCPS-PRS Alliance which was forced to bend its own rules in order to allow an initiative to go ahead, which then served to prove how much more money can be made without their involvement.The reasons for this are too varied and complex to go into in any great detail. But fundamentally the publisher was able to move faster and do quick deals (with everyone from Radiohead itself to iTunes and Last.fm) which would ensure the money came in straight away. But Dyball is also clear that this is not about to lead to the publisher withdrawing rights en masse from the society network.Where Dyball is arguably less successful is in busting some of the ‘myths’ which have grown up around the experiment. Firstly, the most effective way to confront the claim that the average unit price was too low would have been to reveal what the average price in fact was.Instead Dyball points to the fact that the band and their management never announced a timeline for the pay-what-you-like experiment and were watching the average price daily with a view to potentially withdrawing it any moment should it drop too low. Dyball points out that the average price went down after the download moved from uberfans to less committed fans, as expected.It’s clear that the BitTorrent downloads did indeed greatly outnumber those from Radiohead’s official site. But this was almost certainly always likely to be the case and all of this should not negate the ‘success’ of the experiment. And it was certainly an interesting aside to learn that of the dozen or so exclusive members of the ‘circle of trust’ who knew about the whole pay-what-you-like experiment before it launched, it was the band’s manager Chris Hufford from Courtyard management who won the sweepstakes on how many downloads there would be, the average price paid and how many box sets they would shift!So how many did they shift? Well, according to Dyball there were a total of three million album purchases including the box sets, CDs and all downloads including iTunes and pay-what-you-like downloads via their official site. That’s an incredible number, given that their previous three albums sold in the low hundreds of thousands.What about the claims that “no permissions were secured to use email addresses for future marketing”. Dyball confronts this by pointing to the fact that “Radiohead don’t want to sell or misuse addresses and will only use them to offer fan-focused value added services if they feel it’s appropriate.”While that may well be true, that’s not the point really. It may have been more cock up than an issue of marketing permissions but we have still yet to find anyone who received a follow up email from the band until the release of Reckoner – way after most of the gigs and other campaign milestones had taken place.But again this should not lead to the conclusion that the campaign failed. This was virgin territory for everyone involved. And, at least, when it came to the Nude ‘stems’ release which received some criticism (when the band originally charged for each ‘stem’ of the track which could be then be remixed by the fans), it meant that the band could respond by offering Reckoner stems for free to those who had bought by the Nude stems.One myth which Dyball is completely successful in busting is the accusation that the band were somehow foolish by giving away the songs for free. The fact that Radiohead had made more money before ‘In Rainbows’ was physically released than they made in total on ‘Hail To the Thief’ is surely evidence enough that the initiative was a tremendous success.In fact, if anything, the only trouble with the whole thing was that it was just arguably too successful. The whole ‘pay what you like’ experiment became the story rather than the music itself. And that’s not so Radiohead. The band and Thom Yorke initially found themselves answering questions about why they chose to do what they did rather than being asked about the music itself.At the end of the day In Rainbows is arguably a better album than Hail to the Thief, though clearly not so classic as, say, OK Computer. And lest we forget the quality of the music should also be considered when judging whether the initiative was a ‘success’.The band may not do things the same again. But the significance of the initiative, and the fact that they even tried it, is a huge testament to a band who remain such trend setters, even today some 15 years after the release of their first album.THE STATS• After being made available for free for 3 months the album was no.1 in the UK and in the US• 1st Radiohead album on iTunes – no.1 album selling 30,000 units in the US in the first week• The physical CD has sold 1.75 million to date and is still top 200 UK & US• They sold 100k boxsets via W.A.S.T.E.• Nearing 17 million plays on last.fm• 1.2 million fans will see the tour• The digital income from the experiment made a material difference to WCM’s UK digital revenue this yearMORE STORIES FROM MUSIC ALLYComes With Music lacking Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, OasisVideo: Hands on with Brian Eno’s Bloom iPhone appWhy MySpace is (apparently) like bad sex with an ex-girlfriend
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