“In rainbows” is the seventh studio Album from English band, Radiohead, and was launched with this simple statement from guitarist Johnny Greenwood while sitting at his laptop in his kitchen,
Hello everyone.
Well, the new album is finished, and it’s coming out in 10 days;We’ve called it In Rainbows.
Jonny
In 1997 Radiohead followed up their successful but undistinguished (Despite great tracks such as “Creep” and “High and dry”) first two albums, “Pablo Honey,” and “The Bends” with “OK Computer”. OK Computer’s expansive sounds and heavy anti-consumer themes that resonated with a generation laid the ground work for their 2000 release “Kid A” an album described by some as computers feeling sad and listening to Jazz, minimalist, expansive and even at points uplifting.
They have influenced such acts as Muse, Coldplay, Travis, John Mayer, Bloc party and The Roots. Now there influence has gone one step further and Thom Yorke has made his dreams come true.
“We were having endless debates, spending entire afternoons talking about, ‘Well, if we do something, how do we put it out?’ ” he recalls. “It just became this endless and pointless discussion. Because in our dreams, it would be really nice to just let off this enormous stink bomb in the industry.” –
www.ateaseweb.com/2006/07/03/ny-times-the-sweet-malaise-of-thom-yorke/
As we all know by now, with the Release Of “In Rainbows,”, he has done just that. With Radiohead not signed to any label at all, they offered the album for download on their site, www.inrainbows.com, as a 48Mb self extracting zip file. Radiohead have done this with previous releases, “Kid A” appearing on the now defunct Napster three months before the street date.
Unlike most other models of marketing, Radiohead have asked their fans how much they were willing to pay; you could even download the album for free if you wanted. Gratis. Zero, not a penny if that’s the way you felt.
This has been done before; Jane Siberry has made a practise of this sort of marketing. It is slightly different with Radiohead; Siberry did not have the profile of Radiohead.
In this string of articles I intend to chart the actions of Radiohead and draw comparisons to make this mechanism something that we can all use- the only variation being the degree of ground work that Radiohead has put in. Any act that started 21 years ago (1986) is already going to have a loyal base of fans.
