It was only a few months ago that Radiohead released In Rainbows, their seventh album. The album was available for digital download at a price chosen by their fans. This innovative approach has since opened a new door for musicians eager to share their music. On April 29th Coldplay took Radiohead’s idea and made it their own by offering a free digital download of “Violet Hills,” the first single off of their highly anticipated fourth album, Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends. Hitwise recorded that U.S. visits to www.coldplay.com increased by 1800% since the bands new single was available free online in comparing April 27th data to April 29th data. Not only did traffic surge, but the site also quickly crashed. On that day their site ranked #1 among the Bands and Artists category, whereas two days prior to this the website ranked at #305. Hitwise data for the UK revealed that Coldplay exceeded Radiohead’s success by generating a daily market share of 19.87% in the Bands and Artists category on April 29th.

Perhaps this triumph for Coldplay can be attributed partially to their new website which aside from providing the free download also includes numerous other promotions. The site is hosting a competition to win free tickets to concerts in New York, London, and Barcelona. Fans can also embed a widget promoting the concert and Coldplay updates on their MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, and even their own sites. Another part of the site features graphics containing album artwork and videos of the band which are slowly “unlocked,” or made visible to the visitor as the concert dates approach. Hence, fans keep coming back. In addition to this content, there is also a unique band timeline that highlights a memory from each year since the bands conception. This timeline is composed of concert video, early show posters, and hand written notes from band members. The lack of a traditional discography or bio section illustrates that this is a band with a solid following that needs no introduction.

The presence of this loyal fan base could be responsible for the high level of traffic to the site and further demonstrates why free digital music distribution may only be a successful business model for already established musicians. Regardless, Coldplay should be credited with taking what Radiohead started as an alternative strategy to another level. Their long awaited return to their fans comes not only with what sounds like another amazing album, but with an innovative marketing approach that targets the band’s audience where they come to find their music first…on the internet.

“Pay What you want for this article,” – a fantastic piece in the New York Times by Jon Pareles that speaks mainly about a very creative and important advertising concept that dates back to your Consumer Behavior 101 course. I feel it is something that a lot of us, in this age, have forgotten. Radiohead, quite simply, allowed for their new album, “Rainbows,” to be downloaded right of the site. What was the marketing trick? Fans were allowed to pay anything they wanted for that album, from 0 to 99.99 pounds. Promoting this album only ran to the extent of a two line announcement on the official website. Purchases were made from Afghanistan all the way to North Korea – talk about reach! It turned out to be very successful, where “a ‘significant percentage’ of the 1.2 million people who visited the Radiohead Web site downloaded the album.” Since there were no middle men in this entire process the band’s “$2.26 per album” worked out to their advantage in addition to a tremendous amount of publicity. All in all this was a huge risk but an incredibly profitable one for this incredible band.

There are a few ideas that are an important take away from this approach. One obvious reason is the amount of data that is now available to the band. Letting the customer pay his own amount gives them an idea as to who their core audience is, where they are concentrated, and more importantly, who the brand loyalists are. From an online perspective, the sheer accumulation of worthwhile data is more than enough for this strategy to be deemed successful. I mean, I don’t think they would have ever guessed that they actually had a small following in Afghanistan!

Also we, as advertisers, tend to forget who we are advertising for – the client or the consumer? Campaigns and creative sometimes focuses more on pushing the product on the consumer rather than making it enticing for him to be pulled in. Radiohead’s strategy gave their fans an incredible amount of control, allowing them to decide what the album was worth. They were saying “what is my album worth to you,” as opposed to “my album is worth $$$ much, and you should pay this to enjoy it.” Granted, Radiohead’s success can also be attributed to the type of band that they are – one that turns down multi-million dollar record deals in order to stay independent, and caters to a fan base that is more often than not, extremely loyal. But ultimately the concept behind this promotion must not be forgotten – the consumer IS king, and fueling this notion is almost guaranteed to be successful for all parties involved.