music becomes us

As for Radiohead's new album In Rainbows, I love it. "House of Cards" is a particularly haunting and ethereal song that has transported me frequently over the past few days. And I must admit that I am fascinated by the band's decision to sell the album online for whatever you feel like paying. It's a wonderful experiment. Who knows whether it will make money for the band, much less become a model for other bands to follow. It definitely won't work for most bands, who don't even get money to make an album until they've agreed to follow the traditional music cd format, etc. But if it works, it could be huge. And Radiohead is positioned to make something crazy like this work, not only because they have an alternative fanbase and the album is actually incredible, but because they acknowledge where the music industry is headed. Jonny Greenwood, the lead guitarist, recently made the following interesting statements in an interview:

What’s motivating the band to distribute the album this way?
Just getting it out quickly. It was kind of an experiment as well; we were just doing it for ourselves and that was all. People are making a big thing about it being against the industry or trying to change things for people but it’s really not what motivated us to do it. It’s more about feeling like it was right for us and feeling bored of what we were doing before.

Why give people the option to pay whatever they want?
It’s just interesting to make people pause for even a few seconds and think about what music is worth now. I thought it was an interesting thing to ask people to do and compare it to whatever else in their lives they value or don’t value.

Have you gotten any figures of how much people are choosing to pay?
No we get the numbers tomorrow supposedly. Yeah, I don’t know. The more exciting thing for me is just hearing it on the radio today and knowing it’s landed on everybody’s desk at the same time. That’s what’s exciting. But yeah, I’m sure our manager will have some idea soon.

By the way, I'll have you know that I did pay for the album, and I laid down a cool six pounds for it.