Last week we issued a news release titled Coldplay’s Free Single Propels Website to #1 Online Among Bands and Artists. We found that U.S. visits to Coldplay.com increased 19 fold on the back of the band’s new single, Violet Hill, being released for free online. On April 29, 2008, the day the single was released on Coldplay.com, the website ranked as the most visited website among the Bands and Artists category. A little more than 1 out of every 40 visits to Bands and Artists category went to Coldplay’s website that day.
My colleague, Ben Kelly, pointed out that Coldplay is just one of many bands testing the waters with free online downloads. The record industry is at a point of major change and several established artists are experimenting with creative means of distributing and making money from music.
Last fall Radiohead released their album In Rainbows online with consumers given the opportunity to download the album at whatever price they were willing to pay. Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor produced an album for Saul Williams which was made available as a free download or a high quality version was available for $5. Nine Inch Nails have since released two albums online, Group I-IV in March and The Slip this week. Fans were able to download the first nine songs of Group IV-V for free and the new album is entirely free.
Radiohead’s release was much more popular than either Coldplay’s or either of the Nine Inch Nails releases, as measured by share of US Internet visits.

The other really interesting thing I noticed is that Radiohead’s website traffic has maintained a much higher average ranking since the release of their album than before. This indicates that the promotion worked to bring fans to the website and that they keep coming back. Radiohead.com has maintained a position among the top 100 Bands and Artists websites each month since the release of In Rainbows (with the exception of January when the site ranked 106). Compare that with the site’s ranking before the release – as illustrated in the chart below. In the past two years, the site never cracked the top 100, reaching highs of 147 in April 2007 and 106 in May 2006 and lows of 352 in October 2006, 360 in July 2007 and 359 in August 2007.

One of the key questions facing record labels and bands is how to make money in the face of peer to peer filesharing. Bands that build a direct relationship with fans may be better placed to make money from special offers such as limited edition albums and concert tickets. We’ll continue to watch Coldplay’s website to see if website visits remain higher after the release of the single than before.