Radiohead challenges the record industry model

Radiohead’s new album is out today !

And believe it or not, you can pay whatever you want to get it.. “It’s up to you” says inrainbows.com, the album’s website, actually the only place where you can download the digital 10 track LP.

When their contract with the records label EMI expired, the band didn’t want to renew it, and decided to produce and distribute their seventh album themself, a choice that would be considered as risky, but Radiohead members don’t seem to care much..

They are well aware that the classic music industry model is Dying (CDs are part of the past history already), and Internet and the mp3 format have completely changed the rules in the past few years, and records labels still seems to ignore all this (and they keep trying to sue people, and ask governments to reinforce laws against young people which are downloading more and more, and who used to be their clients..).

Anyway, Radiohead members also know that they will make more profits on their concerts tickets, and are happy to hustle the established majors by making a choice that will probably stay  ”historical”, like Prince did when he gave away his album from free in a Sunday newspaper.

If their choice happens to be a good business model, and if they actually make good profits, or more money on sales than they used to do before with a record label (which actually get most of the money *70%* you pay when you buy a CD), this would probably be a severe earthquake for all the records companies that makes money out of what’s primarily supposed to be Art rather than business.

I just bought my copy of the album for £5, and I’d be happy to buy a couple more for friends rather than just doing the usual “Ctrl-C Ctrl-V”. Radiohead you Rock !

( Original picture from Radiohead’s blog. )

By the way, I’m quite rubbish at writing reviews about music content (I’m more into visuals), but my friend and music specialist No wrote a good post about the album (in french only).

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