People Actually Buying In Rainbows

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mojo-photo-inrainbowscover5.JPGHey, so there was this band, they put an album out on the intertubes? You might remember it: they’d send you the album through the tubes, and then you’d take the album out of the little truck and put in as much money as you wanted and send it back to them through the return tube. It was a lot of fun. But that was months ago. So, nine days ago, Radiohead’s In Rainbows materialized in actual stores on actual CDs (and vinyl!) and there was some question over how it would sell, seeing as how the kids have had unfettered access to 160kbps mp3s for a while. Turns out they needn’t have worried: In Rainbows landed at #1 on the Billboard album charts in the US, achieving the same feat in the UK.

However, like most pieces of news from the music industry these days, this is mostly just a sign of how bad things have become.

The hard copy of In Rainbows sold 122,000 copies this week to land at the top spot, but only four years ago, the band’s last album Hail to the Thief sold over 300,000 copies its first week, and that was only good for #3. There are definitely fewer big releases to contend with the first week of the year, but still

Sales figures for the internet “name your own price” experiment have not been released, although frontman Thom Yorke did tell an interviewer that 15 people actually paid the maximum price of £99.99 ($196.53). Jeez, the CD box set with a book and eight extra tracks was only $109 at the record store I was at. And no, I didn’t buy it.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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