Radiohead’s new album, In Rainbows, will bow Oct. 10 as an independent release – no music cartel involved – and customers get to choose their own price!
“Radiohead is on a sustained run as the most interesting and innovative band in rock, but what makes In Rainbows important — easily the most important release in the recent history of the music business — are its record label and its retail price: there is none, and there is none,” Josh Tyrangiel reports for TIME Magazine.
MacDailyNews Note: You can pay as little £.01 (US$.02) plus £0.45 to cover the credit card handling fee. The album is also available separately as part of a £40 box-set which includes the album on two vinyl records, on CD, another CD with additional songs, lyrics, photos, and artwork.
“In Rainbows will be released as a digital download available only via the band’s web site, Radiohead.com. There’s no label or distribution partner to cut into the band’s profits — but then there may not be any profits. Drop In Rainbows‘ 15 songs into the on-line 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. It’s the first major album whose price is determined by what individual consumers want to pay for it. And it’s perfectly acceptable to pay nothing at all,” Tyrangiel reports.
“Radiohead’s contract with EMI/Capitol expired after its last record, Hail to the Thief, was released in 2003; shortly before the band started writing new songs, singer Thom Yorke told TIME, ‘I like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one. And, yes, it probably would give us some perverse pleasure to say ‘F___ you’ to this decaying business model,'” Tyrangiel reports.
“While many industry observers speculated that Radiohead might go off-label for its seventh album, it was presumed the band would at least rely on Apple’s iTunes or United Kingdom-based online music store 7digital for distribution. Few suspected the band members had the ambition (or the server capacity) to put an album out on their own. The final decision was apparently made just a few weeks ago, and, when informed of the news on Sunday, several record executives admitted that, despite the rumors, they were stunned. ‘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,'” Tyrangiel reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: They may not have the server capacity, as the site is extremely slow and/or downright unresponsive. We’ll add news of the format(s) offered and whether DRM is involved when we can get through to find out.
Radiohead’s In Rainbows Website is here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Wealthy Industrialite” for the heads up.]
[Note: MacDailyNews coined the term “Middlebronfman,” a combination of “middleman” and “Bronfman” [Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr.], in an article on Monday, October 03, 2005 with the sentence, “Eliminate the middlebronfman.”]
http://www.inrainbows.com/Store/index3.html
Use this link to get access to the store. The main page is blocked.
1. how about listen to it first then decide how much it’s worth ?
2. they aren’t the first band to do this.
If they want to lose their shirt over bandwidth, more power to them. It couldn’t happen to a less exciting band. What idiots.
They are idiots, If I am looking for new bands/music I start clicking around in iTunes and listen to the previews and decide if I like a band or not. I guess i would never find Radiohead that way so I will never learn about them and I am sure that this is the same with other people as well. Oh well their loss. Any band that isn’t on iTunes are idiots – I have found more music on iTunes then I ever found in any record store.
Why would iTunes refuse to take them on board??
Here is another album that is completely free to download.
It’s from a band called The Bastard Fairies, and it’s a pretty good album.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” /> Check it out.
If i remember correctly, Radiohead wanted to use iTunes but Apple wanted to sell individual songs and they objected.
I love Radiohead and I would buy their music wherever they sold it. I will just have to be petient since they probably will have bandwidth issues for a while.
They are the ideal band to go without a lable, very loyal fan base. Even if they sell half as many albuns as before they will probably make more money. I wish them nothing but good luck and i look forward to supporting them, i just hope i can get tickets for their NYC shows. Truely awesome band live.
That being said, I wish they were on iTunes…it just makes everything easier that way for me. Not to mention i really prefer ACC to MP3. Ordering a actual CD and converting is starting to sound like a good option.
I like to use iTunes cards. They are easy to pick up and one less credit card # floating around the internet. Therefore I will always use iTunes.
Can you imagine Apple making a deal with artists where the artists get 70% and iTunes gets 30%. That would destroy the industry once and for all.
I always considered Smashing Pumpkins’ music dross.
@musician
1. do you know anything about radiohead and their fanbase?
2. as someone already mentioned, cdbaby gets you on itunes along with a host of other options. don’t really need a label for that.
3. you are correct about the free publicity.
@dross
please define that “most innovative band in rock ever” statement. i’d be willing to bet that there are a whole list of bands that come before them. oh wait… you probably were referring to their use of technology to give away crappy music… not innovative with the music they make… my bad.
i can’t wait to get this radiohead album after seeing them in concert last year. AMAZING!!
@Dross
Yes, it was an awesome concept but their initial releases were hard to impossible to find vinyl records. It took some time for a distribution for the rest of the fans to find them.
CDbaby and Tunecore and a few others enable independent artists to post their wares to iTunes (and Amazon, and other online music shops). But, you still have to follow the iTunes rules – pricing and individual downloads, etc, which some artists may not agree with. A good plan B though, if this experiment fails
“Even if they sell half as many albuns as before they will probably make more money”
Waayyy too conservative an estimate. Most artists will realize around 5 cents per album sale under the standard contracts with labels. If you sold a million albums, you can equal this income level by selling a mere 2500 albums yourself at $20. The caveat being whether you can get enough exposure (advertising) to do so.
Wishing success to Radiohead as I love to see the blood sucking music cartels lose.
guess this is a sure fire way to find out who / how many true fans they have
I don’t know what’ll happen with this idea, but I applaud Radiohead for having the balls to try it. Finally, we’ll know the truth — what percentage of people will pay, and how much.
AAABBABA the best band in the world??? LOLZ0rZ!! Have you heard Britney’s new stuff?
I never pay for music, but I’m going to pick up this album for $5 just to show that I support what they’re doing.
Jesus people, if you would like to sell your original music on iTunes you can apply to be an “iTunes Artist” here…
https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZLabel.woa/wo/2.0.5.1.11
There’s this thing called Google…and it helps you find stuff…on the interweb.
MDN is wrong. I just got it for $00.00. No credit card information was required, and no credit card fee processing fee. That’s what I’m talking about. If they come to Madison, WI, I’ll gladly pay them for a ticket… but I’m not about to pay any artist for a digital copy of their music that costs nothing to duplicate.
PS radiohead is swell.
Face
Not paying them a dime will kill their offering in no time. The guys are trying something different and you just showed them that there may be too many assholes likes yourself to make this kind of distribution work.
Radiohead and the Charlatans are some of my favourite bands from the 90’s. Thanks for the heads up that the Charlatans are selling their own music.
As for Apple, it would be cool that they could sell their albums for say $6.99. Give a bigger slice of the pie to both distributor and band.
Time to change their name…
InternetHead
Yup, the site accepts (for a pre-order) a zero amount. We’ll see if, once the tenth rolls around, if the download will be available without further info or cost.
Best band in the world? What, The Miles Davis Sextet?
@DogGone
That we don’t support it MAY be exactly the message we want to send them – it depends. If I can get some sort of lossless files, I’ll forego buying a CD and take a slight reduction in price to compensate for no jewel case, art, etc. On the other hand, if I’m going to get compressed AAC or MP3, then it’s not worth much at all to me.
With internet distribution, this could be the chance for independent bands to start offering totally different products than the labels ever could. Want MP3? Fine. AAC? Fine, too. How about 24-bit/96khz studio-quality files? Maybe I’ll buy the CD quality files, love the album, and come back and spend $20, 30, 40 or whatever for super-high quality files.
If these guys are going to start thinking out of the box on distribution, they could get really creative.