Overheard In Providence

Radiohead’s new album, In Rainbows, has gotten lots of press recently, mainly because the album can only be purchased directly from the band’s website, and is being sold at no specified price. Should you go to the site and click download, you will be asked to name your own price, enter your payment information, and be charged a processing fee of about 95 cents in addition to whatever amount you requested to pay.

Radiohead is certainly not the first band to sell their own album, and in fact not the first artist to let fans name their own price (Jane Siberry and Keith Green are two examples I’ve seen mentioned, the latter is pre-digital music). Even so, In Rainbows was likely downloaded over 1.2 million times the day of its release, so it’s clearly forging new territory. It looks like Nine Inch Nails may follow suit.

I’ve been a big fan of Radiohead for sometime (sorry Matt), especially Kid A and Amnesiac, but Hail to the Theif not so much. Also, I have a lot of contempt for the recording industry. Their zest for litigation and desire to strengthen copyright doesn’t appear to be in anyone’s best interest. This weekend I decided to support Radiohead and take a stance against big media. I made In Rainbows the most expensive album I’ve ever purchased, paying a whooping $51.59 for the albums 10 songs (really 25.45 pounds, since radiohead is actually charging for the album in pounds). I was tempted to pay an additional 15 pounds for the special edition box set, but vinyl and boxes just aren’t my thing.

Obviously I’m hoping that Radiohead’s new album does very well. Even though few bands have a comparable fan base, their success will likely inspire others to explore alternative ways of producing and distributing music. Originally I was disappointed that Radiohead isn’t allowing fans to pay nothing for the new album, but I’ve since reconsidered. You probably need to force people to enter their credit card number before they decide to be generous (perhaps shareware developers should take note).

I do think its superlame that the album is only downloadable as a not particularly high quality MP3. Since those of us who purchased the MP3 entered an email address and password, I’m hoping we’ll eventually be able to download a higher quality version. If not, I’ll probably illegally download the CD version of the album when it’s released next year. I don’t think Radiohead will mind.

As of now, I’ve only had a chance to listen to the album once. I listened to Saturday night while lying in bed. It was great. Maybe that’s because when you pay 5 dollars for a song, you listen to it really closely.

Update: Apparently you can download the album for free. I haven’t bothered to verify this, but I did just go to the website, enter “0″, and hit buy. The site then said I was on a queue, which didn’t happen when I paid for the album. Perhaps Radiohead is limiting the number of people who can download the album for free at any given time. Either way I approve.