Radiohead In Rainbows: a new model or just a successful project?

Everyone knows about more than a successful Radiohead project - they put their album In Rainbows on their website and everyone could download it, paying as much as they wanted or not paying at all. According to comScore, the album downloaded more than 1 million listeners and 40% of them paid. The album collected about $ 3 million. Radiohead earned more on sales of In Rainbows than on all other albums combined (only digital format).

Although many immediately decided that the model proposed by Radiohead (“I pay as much as I want”) is the model of the future music, the musicians themselves say something completely different:

Tom York (Thom Yorke): The only reason why we managed to do this, why we paid someone at all, is because we have already gone through all the millstones of this business. This is not a model for something else, but simply an answer to the situation. We had no contract. We have our own studio. We have our new server. What else could we do? It was an obvious idea. But it worked only because we were where we were.

According to Wired, "... the [Radiohead] experiment showed that there is a huge amount of free space for innovation in the music business and this is just one of many possible ways . " Absolutely agree. By the way, I recommend reading all interviews in Wired - David Byrne and Thom Yorke on the Real Value of Music .

For reference: now the album is not available for download on the site, is sold in digital format and on CD. It sells well: last week the album was ranked 9th in the Top Digital Albums ranking and 15th in the overall Billboard chart.