Radiohead Fans Rejoice

Posted by Matt Cipriano | 1 Comment

So, it has been a day and a half since my last post so I am feeling a little rusty, I might have to take it a bit easy today to ease my way back into the whole blogging and typing thing, after all, I wouldn’t want to hurt myself or pull a finger muscle or something.

Anyway, earlier this week Radiohead announced that their newest album “In Rainbows would be released on October 10th. Normally, this alone would be cause for celebration, but fans have another reason to celebrate this album.

Radiohead’s contract with EMI/Capitol records was up after their last album. Instead of renewing with them or finding a new label, Radiohead went ahead and produced their album on their own and are planning to release it on their own through their website, but wait, it gets better…

Beyond just releasing it on their site, when you go there to purchase it, at check-out it tells you to pay what you want. According to an article from Time:

Drop In Rainbows‘ 15 songs into the online checkout basket and a question mark pops up where the price would normally be. Click it, and the prompt “It’s Up To You” appears. Click again and it refreshes with the words “It’s Really Up To You” — and really, it is.

This makes Radiohead the first major band to jump labels and allow customers to decide what they want to pay for their music. An interesting model as most musicians don’t make a ton off of music sales to begin with (now all profit goes to them), plus it eliminates the cost of actually producing CDs or anything like that.

Of course, record industry folks are freaking: “This feels like yet another death knell,” emailed an A&R executive at a major European label. “If the best band in the world doesn’t want a part of us, I’m not sure what’s left for this business.”

Of course they seemed to survive when Pearl Jam started to produce their own music in the 90s… and Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah chose to do it alone as well, plus Wilco did too. Anyway, 6 days to go until the Radiohead site is clogged with fans trying to download the new music from their site.

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