Radiohead: It's Up To You Sales Data Published

There has been a lot going on in Iceland of late: street press wars, environmental protest songs, something about a financial crisis, and this week the You Are In Control conference hit Reykjavik.

The conference focused on distribution and income models for artists in the age of social networking, free downloads and diminishing attention spans.

On day one of the conference, some statistics on sales of Radiohead’s In Rainbows were revealed, and it is pretty amazing.

• The album was a No. 1 in five major markets.
• The album went to No. 1 on US iTunes selling 30,000 downloads in the first week.
• The physical CD has sold in excess of 1.75 million copies.
• Including 100,000 copies of the premium box set.

All this after being available as a free (It’s up to you) download for a full two months prior to its proper release.

Is this evidence enough to encourage others to use similar release models, not sure? Does it prove that downloads don’t kill sales, I think so.

Björk and Yorke team up to save Iceland.

Björk and Thom Yorke are teaming up to save Iceland, no not from the current economic crisis but from the irreparable damage the Icelandic aluminium smelting industry is having on the country’s stunning environment.

On October 20th, One Little Indian will release the collaboration titled Nattura, the song it is claimed will highlight the growing movement to reclaim the country’s natural resources from big business and pollution.

You can find out more on why Björk is supporting the movement on the Nattura website.

I heard it on the (Reykjavik) grapevine

There is no better way to get an idea of what is going on in a city than by reading the street press, and of course the greatest insight comes from the letters to the editor page: Canberra has BMA covering the Garema Place silver cushion wars and bitch waitresses in "you pissed me off", Sydney has Drum Media with constant talk of sniffer dogs, scalpers and loss of the local live scene, and Reykjavik has The Grapevine where, between letters about pronunciation of Icelandic words and expressions of distaste for Americans, Björk has created a stir by highlighting what she sees as inherent sexism in music journalism.

While a beer in any of Reykjavik’s oh-so-cool bars will set you back an arm and a leg plus your first born, the Reykjavik Grapevine is free. The Grapevine is an English language street press loaded with useful information for the small ex-pat community and entertainment hungry tourist alike.

An Open Letter to the Reykavik Grapevine from Björk Guðmundsdóttir.

I saw in the last issue of iceland’s newspaper in english : “grapevine” , that valgeir sigurðsson was credited for having written all the instrumentals for my album vespertine . could i please offer a correction : ...

...i´d like to say that he didn´t write it or produce . he was a computer programmer for a third of it and a recording engineer for a third . The other two thirds were done by other engineers and programmers.

Björk then offers some suggestions as to why this miss truth has existed for so long covering: ignorance, sexism, and laziness.

...i hope this correction will be a positive input into more discussion about this

warmth, björk

Read a full re-post of the statement on björk’s website.

What do you think - are music journalists ignorant, sexist or lazy?

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