In Rainbows: Buy the new Radiohead album for as much as you want

Posted on October 8, 2007
Filed Under Entertainment |

Radiohead announced last week that their new album In Rainbows will be available for digital download at a price set by you: the consumer. This is a revolutionary approach for distributing a new album and it is no surprise that Radiohead are the first to do it. The digital download will become available on the band’s website starting October 10th but pre-orders are possible now. Fans will also be able to purchase a Discbox version which will include CD and Vinyl versions of the album along with additional print material; the latter will not be part of the pay-what-you-want campaign which is only limited to the digital download version of the album.

Radiohead In Rainbows store

Radiohead are doing this at a time that record labels are waging a fierce war against those who share music online using popular P2P applications such as Kazaa and Bittorrent. The record companies have successfully sued many for copyright infringement and recently won an important case against the first person who decide to defend herself in court as opposed to settling out of court; a few days ago, a jury decided that Jammie Thomas of Duluth, Minnesota, should pay record companies nearly one quarter million dollars for distributing 24 songs using a file sharing application. She should have waited for Radiohead’s new album or picked up a copy of the U.K. newspaper Mail on Sunday which Prince used to distribute his new album Planet Earth for free.

This recent legal development in illegal file-sharing and Radiohead’s (and Prince’s) bold distribution moves are the beginning of a new business model for the music industry. Regardless of the fact that the dinosaurs that make up the Recording Industry Association of America are slow to change, it is obvious that change is coming, and fast. The movie industry is sure to follow sooner or later considering that there is a huge number of people who prefer to download the latest movie and watch it on their computer rather than pay the current outrageous prices at the Box Office.

Buy Radiohead’s In Rainbows.

Comments

Leave a Reply




Your Ad Here