In Rainbows

Today will hopefully go down as an important day in musical history.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about: Radiohead announced last week that their much anticipated seventh album was done and was going to be released directly through the album’s website. Fans were given the option to pre-order a discbox for 40 pounds or download the album digitally for however much they wanted to pay. That’s right you could pay however much you wanted including nothing at all.

Radiohead has been out of a recording contract since their last album and many weren’t expecting the album till late next year after the band signed to a label. Radiohead has completely sent their fans and the recording industry for a loop by completely surpassing a record label and releasing their music directly to their fans.

The album came out last night and activation codes for the download were sent out sometime around midnight. Music bloggers and fans stayed up all night and the reception has been nothing but positive, not just because of how good the actual album is but also because of how Radiohead went about this whole situation. People were actually paying more for the download than they would for a regular CD just because of how much they appreciate what Radiohead has done.

Radiohead has taken the control away from a record label and basically put the control in the hands of their fans. As far as I know, a band this large and popular has never attempted something like this. They essentially leaked the album themselves.

The blog You Ain’t No Picasso summed it up very nicely:

“By offering the album in the way they did, Radiohead gave us a bit of a gift: universal excitement. This effectively brought back the joy of album release day — millions of people hearing the record for the first time at once — and combined it with the our modern ability to instantly gush to all of those fellow fans online. It’s the best of all worlds.”