Cheezhead Recruiting News and Opinion

In case you haven’t heard, Radiohead, arguably the best band of the last 15 years – OK Computer is the best album of my lifetime – is releasing their new album, In Rainbows, online for whatever price its buyers want to pay. Zero or $1,000, it’s fair game. No record company is involved. Click here for Time’s take.

The more I think about this from a marketing perspective, the more impressed I am. The band could have easily released it like every other album in existence, but they didn’t. They made it remarkable. And I’ll go out on a limb and say they’ll outsell their last album as a result.

Already, there are nearly 10,000 pages indexed on the Web talking about it. Traffic has spiked. I’ve gotten four e-mails from fellow fans talking about it and sharing the link to go buy it – excitement that hasn’t happened since Kid A in Y2K. Even people I know who could care less about music have said, “Hey, have you heard about the new Radiohead album online going for whatever price you want?”

No doubt once it’s released, the buzz will continue. People will talk about the album. Blog posts will be written. Critics will emphasize sales numbers, good or bad. They’ll be on the cover of most record magazines and surely some business rags. They may even create a sea change in how music is sold, just when iTunes had figured it out. Other bands will push the envelope as a result.

Hats off to Thom and the lads. Brilliant. And yes, I paid for the download. And being in £’s, I probably paid too much. But, then again, the marketing lesson is priceless.

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