Hopefully nobody's added this one yet...

xxxxxx

holy!

But also image being a band that has no live show footprint, no online marketing, unfortunate opening studio costs or low quality studio recordings from home studio, etc. Fixing all of those things in order to see album sales costs money in the first place. If Radiohead didn't have a ton of cash and a ridiculous fanbase already already this wouldn't work.

This is just great! It's funny how a band has better marketing plans than a record label. Great.

123, DFelon

Good for them.

Dfelon beat me to it.

nice

xxxxxxx

wow. good on them.

This may not cause a revolution in the entire music industry, but it sure as shit will get some bigger bands (at the level or Radiohead or beyond), to start legitimately rethinking their current situations.

Plus, In Rainbows... is phenomenal, they deserve every benefit they reap.

Go Broncos.

I think it'd be great if all "superstar" artists (Radiohead, Coldplay, Foo Fighters, Tool, JT, etc.) pulled themselves from major labels and used this format. They'd make a ridiculous amount of money by not having to pay royalities or for distribution. Just marketing and maintanance costs. Then that'd enthuse labels to put more energy into maintaining artists that aren't ridiculous fad artists (a band like Thrice or Thursday who recently dropped their major label vs. the newly popular Rihanna). A downside though is that labels have little incentive to make their artists massive superstars unless they have them locked into a multi-album contract. They'd market and sell the artist up until a tipping point and then lay off.

But would that necessarily be a bad thing? Labels being middle men to bigger and better things -- you start out on a label, then if able you move on to independent sales. Music could then determine how well an artist sells, not the labels marketing campaign. Not saying it won't be a flawed system, but it could be preferable to what's going on currently.

Awesome.

Although i think it was awesome to have the ability to legally get free music (i paid 8 pounds for it) which is roughly $16.25. I wanted to pay $15 but i just rounded up to be nice.

Anyway, if bands start to do this other than Radiohead, it's going to ruin the already fragile music industry. I applaud Radiohead for trying to come off as not caring about profit, but they also knew this would make them more money if the average person paid what they are supposed to for the album.

I split on rather Radiohead is really greedy, or thought this whole thing would go differently. :/

you're an idiot

We can probaby never get a real number, but people are more trustworthy than the record labels believe. So a majority (like 70% i heard) of people payed at least 5 euros for In Rainbows, I didn't but am going to get the hard copy next year.

Even if it's not the official number, it shows something I've always expected - allow the people to choose their payment, and it will be reasonable for both ends. I know most chose free, but I find that if you merely would lower CD prices to 5 bucks or so (which would still be way more than double the amount it costs to physically produce one) that their sales would go up. One must hurry though, and act on this possible paradigm shift in the industry!

Thank you Radiohead, for make a great point to people the world over, even if that wasn't your intention.

I bought it despite not being too interested in it. I did it just to support them and show the industry that we're not all theives, even when we could be.

I paid $0...

Dfel is right, from a pure profit standpoint it could have gone hideously wrong
not every band has the financial backing to be able to afford massive losses