From the Horse's Mouth

In 2007, the English rock band Radiohead released their 7th studio album In Rainbows. Up to that point, Radiohead had released all their records, from Pablo Honey in 1993 to Hail to the Thief in 2003, through their label EMI. During this time, Radiohead had established themselves as one of the most popular and critically acclaimed bands of all time.

But when it came time to release their next album, Radiohead decided to end their relationship with EMI and release their new record themselves. In Rainbows was released as a digital download on radiohead.com with a "name your own price" option. It was acceptable to pay nothing for the album.

As Marvin Lin, in the book he wrote on Radiohead's Kid A for the 33⅓ series, put it: "In one dramatic yet understated gesture, Radiohead [...] formulated a release method that had the entire music community suddenly reassessing the relationships among music, value, and consumption." (Lin, 114-115)


Indeed, Radiohead may have changed the music industry, but to start our case study, let's look at what the band's intentions were. In a very McLuhan-esque way, the members of Radiohead argued that the way in which they released In Rainbows was an essential part of the album. In the video above, guitarist Ed O'Brien talks about how self releasing In Rainbows was empowering for the band and for fans. In an interview with Wired magazine, lead singer Thom Yorke vocalizes a similar feeling. Talking about how record labels promote artists ad nauseum, hoping their album will do good in the charts :

“That's what major labels do, yeah. But it does us no good, because we don't cross over [to other fan bases]. The main thing was, there's all this bollocks [with the media]. We were trying to avoid that whole game of who gets in first with the reviews. These days there's so much paper to fill, or digital paper to fill, that whoever writes the first few things gets cut and pasted. Whoever gets their opinion in first has all that power. Especially for a band like ours, it's totally the luck of the draw whether that person is into us or not. It just seems wildly unfair, I think.”

It is clear Radiohead are for the democratization of music. When the album was released, Radiohead also released the "stems" (the individual instrument tracks) from two songs from In Rainbows for fans to do with it whatever they chose. Fans could upload their remixes to radioheadremix.com and rate other people's creations.

To the members of Radiohead, self releasing is not just a creative choice, it is an essential step in making a direct connection between the artist and their fans (as well as potential fans). In their eyes, the "pay what you want" model is about empowering the artist and the listener, not the record label and critics. In the next post, we'll be looking at the response of others in the music industry and some counter arguments to the "pay what you want" model.