Bear with me, I can’t contain my enthusiasm today. After a horrible subway ride to work this morning, I went through my usual litany of sites and saw on the BBC that, after a four year wait, the new Radiohead album, In Rainbows, would be released in only 10 days. That’s October 10. The blogs have been busy salivating today. So will this one.

In Rainbows coverThings that make this release all the more interesting:

1. Radiohead is no longer under contract with a record label. This allows them the freedom to release an album however they’d like. Forget the implications on their own profits, this has equal implications on the musicgoer.

2. The freedom to do what they’d like translates to a three-tier distribution strategy:

1) Download the album for whatever price you’d like to pay for it, October 10.
2) Purchase a 2-CD, 2-Vinyl, Album Art, Lyrics, and Liner notes discbox for £40 on December 3. This includes the October 10 download.
3) Buy the CD wherever it is that the band finally decides to distribute it to, sometime in 2008.

3. The strategy allows the band to market themselves and show that their hype is in being innovative musicians and artists. Releasing an album with 10 days notice is possible, but if you want to move copies and distribute it, the traditional means has been through retail or online store. Additionally, you’ve always needed a lead time for promotional materials. If you’re Radiohead, 10 days is all you need, no promotion necessary.

4. When you aren’t subject to the vagaries of record industries, you can store all the master tapes yourself. You prevent leaks through self-distribution. This becomes virtually irrelevant when you’re allowing people to price their own album, yet serves to create its own hype, as it starts to maintain the self-worth of an official release date. Bands have become upset because record labels cannot control album leaks anymore; why not contain the leak yourself. (I’ve noted, October 10 is 10/10 and December 3 is 12/3. I don’t know if there’s any significance to those dates.)

Lest one thinks that this means that everyone will buy it for nothing, he might want to think again. What this really does is show that people are willing to pay for music that has merit. Not everybody, but a vast majority. I’d be curious as to what the (probably never released) statistics would show in terms of average price paid. I’d bet about $/£10-13 would be what most people pay. Once again they blaze the path for those who have attempted these models and failed, but ultimately proving that commercial music is just that – a valueless commodity. Thom Yorke once said in an oft-quoted 2003 Time interview that he’d like to “say Fuck You” to the “decaying business model.”

Don’t believe me? Here’s some of the best of the articles that have come out on the news:

Radiohead challenges labels with free album – The Daily Telegraph (UK)
How Radiohead killed the record labels – The Daily Telegraph (UK) ***One of the better articles***
Radiohead Says: Pay What You Want – Time.com
Fans crash Radiohead album site – BBC