Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Radiohead 'In Rainbows'

On October 10, 2007 British band, Radiohead, released their seventh album, In Rainbows. The band recently parted ways with Capitol Records, label that promoted the band's music for over a decade, and decided to try something new to the music industry - e-commerce.

The popular rock band decided to call it quits and wave goodbye to the record industry and personally sell their music to the public off their official In Rainbows website as a digital download. They put no price on the record and just asked the fans to donate what they can to the band. No promotions from the band themselves were really necessary other than a statement on their blog declaring their digital distribution. From the National Public Radio (NPR) to the UK Times, Radiohead made headlines universally for their decision to be the sole profit of the In Rainbows record.


Though donations ranging in various amounts were offered to the band, according to a survey from Record of the Day, one-third out of 3,000 people chose to download the album for free. So on January 1, 2008, In Rainbows was made available for sale in record stores nation wide under the independent label ATO Records. Though fans of Radiohead were sad to see the band pull the plug to their digital distribution, many begin to wonder if there is even a future in store for today's record companies.