New Radiohead Album Allows Fans to Name Their Price

Written by Frank Smith

Monday, October 1. 2007 at 01:37 PM EDT 1 comment

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The U.K.- based band Radiohead will initially offer its new album In Rainbows as a download from its site and allow fans to determine what price they want to pay for it.

The album will only be available from inrainbows.com with no stated plans for release elsewhere (but, y'know, I'm sure that will change). Radiohead left EMI after the group's contract expired. Despite the band's progression into making digital music, it has been slow to move its music online. iTunes only briefly offered Radiohead's OK Computer and The Bends for sale, but the Amazon MP3 store recently announced the addition of DRM-free Radiohead albums. 7Digital.com also boasts Radiohead's catalogue. Part of the problem was that Radiohead only wanted to sell full albums and not offer songs à la carte.

Being able to set your price for what you think the album is worth is an interesting idea, and one that huge fans will compensate for by paying a graceful price while others might see just how cheap they can go. I'm interested to see what the average price fans suggest will be at the close of this experiment.

At any rate, it offers less risk for those who have been reluctant to make the jump to digital downloads. If you want an actual physical product you can buy the discbox version (a hardback book with slipcase), which includes the album on vinyl, enhanced CD artwork with more songs, and some other stuff. At £40 ($82) a pop, Radiohead obviously isn't undervaluing its product.

So, is this another sign that the music industry could be dying? Or, are the guys in Radiohead merely in the unique position to do things however they want since they're basically sleeping on giant piles of OK Computer money?

As a button on the In Rainbows site says, "It's up to you."