If 40% in the US paid an average of $8.05, that sounds like a lot of cash to me, with no record company fancy accounting, and no delayed payment. That doesn't count the rest of the world, or the fact that this research was not paid for by Radiohead, and was based on a small group of a few hundred people.
Getting all the money up front, instead of waiting for the royalty checks, means that once the initial tax-deductible costs were paid, there was a whole lot of money to get creative with.
All they paid for was the special server time they rented.
Plus they weren't selling the whole thing. There is the box set and a CD still to come. Radiohead fans will buy the CD.
A kot of the people that downloaded it now have some Radiohead songs which they might like enough to go back and buy some of their other music.
I think it was a huge success. The people that want us to think it was a failure are the people that found it frightening that a hugely popular band like Radiohead would actually do this. This frightened record companies and the release of those songs in that way was huge.
The only thing they did wrong was not accepting Paypal for payment, and making you give them your credit card information.
If Morrissey did this it would not be as successful because the demand would not be as great and he has different types of fans, more traditional, older, less computer-savvy. But he would see a HUGE influx of cash very quickly and I think his fans WOULD pay. They are more used to paying for music. When you are used to getting it for free, like younger fans are, paying seems weird.
That's my opinion, anyway. I think it's a very interesting topic.