Information company comScore released findings Tuesday showing that three out of five people who downloaded Radiohead’s most recent album, “In Rainbows,” from the band’s website chose to pay nothing for the music. Radiohead offered Christmas gifts early this year.

The new study shows that of the 1.2 million people who have downloaded “In Rainbows” since it was released last month, on Oct. 10, given the until-now-unheard-of option of paying whatever they wish for it, 62 percent opted to pay nothing, while 12 percent accounted for more than 52 percent of the revenue from sales.

This figures are reportedly not based on a survey but on actual online behavior of Internet users. According to E! Online, the company has permission to track all the users’ Web activity.

ComScore reports in its study that the average price paid was $6 (£2.90) globally, a figure which could have been considerably smaller had it not been for the 12 percent of people willing to pay between $8 and $12 (£3.90 to £5.80) for “In Rainbows,” the price one usually pays to download an album from a retail service like iTunes, the report concluded.

There were differences between buyers from the U. S. and those outside the States, with Americans paying on average $8.05 (£3.89), compared to an average amount of $4.64 (£2.24) those outside the U. S. (mainly Europeans) chose to spend.

In early October, the British band’s manager, Bryce Edge, said he and the band members were not worrying over people choosing to simply download the album for free. “We are prepared to take a risk and we might come out looking very foolish but we believe that if your music is great then people will pay for it,” Edge said.

“The consumer decides how much he thinks it is worth. Personally, I am not sure how much just a digital download is worth,” the manager added.

Surely, Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Ed O'Brien, Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway, Radiohead’s five members, foresaw the possibility of their music reaching people in exchange for very few pennies. They took that risk anyway. Perhaps money was not the issue for them in the first place anyway, meaning that all the current talk of profit and loss over album sales is just a bit beside the point from this perspective.

As some have already noted, not all artists can afford to allow potential customers pay whatever they consider to be a right price for the respective music – risking to have very low sale revenues in the end. Radiohead is an established band, with a solid fanbase and can grant themselves the freedom of having such an experiment.

Newcomers on the other hand could have their own downloads start at a minimal price, could they not?

ComScore senior analyst Andrew Lipsman tells E! Online: “If [Radiohead] is getting $6 on average, and it's basically going straight into their pockets and their costs are minimal, it could be economically viable.”

With people all around the world downloading all sorts of music illegally anyway, Radiohead has done well, making some music lovers feel more at peace with their downloading habits and actually earning money for their work in the studio as well.