Coldplay single downloaded by 600,000 people In First Day, 2 Million In Week

[TimeIsOnYourSide]

hmmm and they were all members of coldplaying.com

[busybeeburns]

Coldplay Single Downloaded By 2 Million People

 

 

In just one week...

 

2 million people downloaded Coldplay’s new single ‘Violet Hill’ while it was available as a free download, it's been revealed.

 

The song, which is the first off the band’s new album ‘Viva La Vida’, was uploaded onto the band’s website last Tuesday (April 29th).

 

Had the song been chart eligible it would have outsold last week’s Top-40 four times over.

 

The song, which was released officially on digital-download today (May 5th), is no longer available to download for free.

 

As previously reported, the band will play three free shows – in Barcelona, New York and London - this June in support of their new album.

 

http://www.gigwise.com/news/42945/coldplay-single-downloaded-by-2-million-people

[::Hayley::]

 

In just one week...

 

2 million people downloaded Coldplay’s new single ‘Violet Hill’

 

Had the song been chart eligible it would have outsold last week’s Top-40 four times over.

 

http://www.gigwise.com/news/42945/coldplay-single-downloaded-by-2-million-people

 

Firstly, two MILLION?!

 

and secondly........ four times over. Hell yeah

[BethWhalley]

What so more people downloaded Violet Hill than all the top 40 put together?!?

[Christa42]

I guess 2 million Coldplay fans can't be wrong

[the_escapist]

I guess 2 million Coldplay fans can't be wrong

 

exactly

[Christa42]

I think they are getting ready to post something on the Coldplay website. This morning Under the V in viva was the "timeline " and now it says "Artwork".

[yoyo911]

wooooooooooooow great number....... i hope the album go far away than 2million...maybe 3million....5million......100million just kidding...i just want the album come out with very goood songs in it

[Chavi]

:dance: yaay impressive !!

[ApproximatelyInfinite]

TWO BLEEPING MILLION!?!??!!?

 

i thought i was pushing it by thinking more than a million.

 

i think the coldplay world exploded today. violet hill shipped out to all of us, news about a POTENTIAL DOUBLE ALBUM, NEW SINGLE ON MAY 21, new picture..........oh godd.

[Cobalt]

Two million...?

 

...;_______;

 

no wonder why the site was slow :laugh3:

[busybeeburns]

Free downloads pay off for musicians

 

 

Forget “pay what you want.” The new model for the music industry may be “pay it forward.”

 

Coldplay has become the latest band to discover that giving away your music - even a little bit for a little time - may, in the long run, end up being worth more than the conventional model of only selling it.

 

To drum up publicity for its new single, “Violet Hill,” which was released last week, the band decided to give it away for a week on its Web site as a free download. On the first day it was available, the song was downloaded more than 600,000 times, according to Billboard magazine. In 2005, “Speed of Sound,” the lead single from Coldplay’s previous album, “X&Y,” sold about 53,000 copies digitally in the United States and the United Kingdom in its first week of release and that was with a marketing campaign and far more anticipation following the breakthrough of their Grammy-winning smash album, “A Rush of Blood to the Head.”

 

Hitwise, the Internet traffic-measuring company, said traffic to the Coldplay Web site jumped 1,800 percent the day of the release over its traffic two days earlier. It moved from No. 305 to No. 1 on the company’s chart of musician Web sites, with more than 2.5 percent of all the U.S. traffic to the sites they monitor.

 

And people didn’t just download “Violet Hill.” They played it. A lot.

 

According to the music social network last.fm, “Violet Hill” set a record among its 15 million members, who played the track about 33,000 times the first day, or once every two seconds.

 

So let’s recap. Spending a fraction of what it normally would to market a new single from a new album, Coldplay landed tons of positive media attention, let people know they have a new single and a new album - “Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends” - coming, got people to listen to the new single and generated lots of goodwill among its fans, while possibly minting new ones.

 

Sounds like a pretty good deal, right?

 

“While publishers become increasingly concerned about the cannibalization of their revenue stream, experiments by Coldplay and Radiohead, at a minimum, prove that free music downloads provide added publicity to increase awareness for album releases,” said Bill Tancer, Hitwise’s general manager of global research.

 

In other words, the “pay-it-forward” model actually works.

 

Wired editor Chris Anderson recently wrote about the rise in “freeconomics” in his magazine, and it will be the topic of his next book, due out next year. “Once a marketing gimmick, free has emerged as a full-fledged economy,” he writes. “Offering free music proved successful for Radiohead, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, and a swarm of other bands on MySpace that grasped the audience-building merits of zero.”

 

After all, the long-term success of any band depends on its relationship with its fans. ("Thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years - this one’s on me,” Reznor told fans on his Web site last week when he made the new Nine Inch Nails album “The Slip” available for free download.)

 

Record companies mainly concern themselves with making as much money as they can in the short-term, since the profit splits on the contracts are more favorable for them at that point. Artists, on the other hand, generally don’t start making serious money until after they have fulfilled their first contract and sign another where they get a higher percentage of the profits and get more control over their careers.

 

That means record companies have less financial incentive to support a veteran band on its fourth album than a brand-new act and its debut, so they haven’t been very interested in strategies that help bands develop long-term relationships. However, as that way of thinking crumbles - thanks to the iTunes-aided ability of fans to buy only the hits they want instead of a whole album that may have only one good song - something else has to replace it.

 

The “pay-it-forward” model will survive only if artists commit to strengthening their relationship to fans with free music and fans commit to supporting their favorite artists financially by buying their albums, going to their shows and buying their T-shirts and other merchandise.

 

Sure, it sounds crazy. But a business model built on mutual respect between artists and fans may just be crazy enough to work. After all, sticking with the currently faltering business model would be even crazier.

 

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/news/article/58662/free-downloads-pay-off-for-musicians/

[Jpw48]

^^ Thats a really good read!

 

Although you have to wonder if every band released a single for free, where would be the fun and excitment? It'd become as routine as anything else in the world, and I personally believe In Rainbows, NIN and Violet Hill all benefitted from the 'surprise' element, as in, no-body saw it coming.

 

I mean;

 

The day Radiohead announced In Rainbows was the start of a new age of online music downloads. Announcing an album ten days before release is extraordinary.

 

And now one of the biggest bands in the world release their new single for free, without giving people more than few weeks notice that the song even existed.

 

But if everyone does it, where's that excitiment, that feeling of surprise, that revolution??

[ricardo]

agreed about the surprise element ^^