I totally agree with Radiohead's decision. If you cannot beat them, join them.

To me, the argument that Radiohead is an established band, probably one of the best band the earth has seen if not the best is totally invalid.

You read articles everyday of artists that provided their listeners with free downloads. These artists made themselves a name and are now recolting what the planted a couple months or years ago. For sure, they need to make a name for themselves, as everybody in real life needs to do. They have to fight and they have to work to be recognized. It is only fair to the rest of the population. I don't see what's fair, and it is only an example, in having a bad female-signer climbing the ladder only because of her breasts and not her voice.

Radiohead's decision will not only bring them an international reputation that nobody has yet (Remember Metallica's decision to fight online download ans what it caused to the group) but will also allow new artists to make their name because people are now more into discovering things than being imposed something they never wanted.

I would pay more for the Radiohead album just to give the finger to the industry to make them understand that it is over and that we will not accept it anymore.

Congratulations to Radiohead who are once again showing a great deal of innovation.

I'm not sure why it's a big deal when Radiohead does what tons of MySpace bands have done for years.

Last year, Tim Armstrong recorded an album, and put it on the net, for free download, 1 song at a time. When all songs were out, the full album was available for free download, or you could buy the cd copy.

Kinda makes Radiohead look like chumps, huh.

Yeah, Garet...a lot of that type of stuff happeneds for many different things...like the SIXAXIS PS3 Controllers...Wasn't there a Third Party PS1 Sixaxis Controller when the PS1's was the thing to have 10 years ago?

Its all about Commercalism...a lot of myspace bands has never been herd before, Where Radiohead has a strong Record Lable with lots and lots of $$$$ to spend on Commercals.

Are you kidding? Does anyone know who Tim Armstrong is in the world? He's not close to the level of Radiohead and for a group that large to ignore the music industry is a big deal. Ditto for the MySpace groups.

Just because Radiohead is a lame pop group doesn't really mean them doing what others have done before is innovative.

I've seen Rancid on any music channel probably 50 times for every time I've seen Radiohead on it, for what that's worth. I'd also bet that more kids have Rancid, Operation Ivy, Transplants, and Devils Brigade, and Hellcat records than they do Radiohead records.

I think Radiohead has fallen out of the public eye, and with good reason. They're one of the most overrated groups around.

You think that because they're a pop band, they can be heralded for doing what "unknown" people have done for years? Are you kidding? Maybe you should continue that logic, and advocate Radiohead stealing other people's music. It can only get better, right?

I don't know if this model will be successful or not; but it appears that things are moving away from a tight circle of mainstream media as the be all and end all of music. Pre-Napster and p2p, I used to only listen to label music. That's all that seemed accessible. Even to this day, I want to VFest and heard The Killers, I never tried to listen to them; but all their songs were familiar. They are just that prevalent and pervasive (invasive?).

Now I have discovered so many talented local artists and I go and see them play live. The web, like radio and television is a place where an artist can put up a free showcase of their work and then hopefully develop a fanbase or be commissioned to do commercialized works. They can post their work at very little expense and with no need to invest in an inventory of media/cds.

I think overall, the sharing of music for (potentially) free with an honour pay system has a level effect that socializes, democratizes and makes available works by artists who perform their trade for love of music and not money.

Maybe an analogy could be drawn from the tiered system of youtube, television, movies, and plays. All of them still exist. There is enough market for the free, the honour pay system and the conventional business model. The conventional will no longer be super powers though.

The move by mainstreamers to post free online is a move to maybe divert attention from the indies who have already been doing this. It's something familiar to the software world. Some software went open-source to recapture market share lost to freeware and open-source competitors. It was strictly PR moves. After recapturing attention and reliance from the market... they moved back to a commercial pay model. They don't want you to diversify your music interests. That affects profits.

Walmart employed this strategy. It's called market saturation. They will flood the market in an effort to eliminate the competition from the minds of the public. After the public has been 'branded', normal monopolization and profit extraction can resume.

Radiohead's move is seen as progressive? Offering your music to the public without restriction and asking people to pay whatever they think your music is worth has been done for hundreds, if not thousands of years. It's called busking... and begging.

I'm in no way an advocate for giant multinational media corporations or for the way they attempt to control the sale and marketing of music. At times, it got ugly. But there was a positive side to it.
The old traditional approach was bands would make a demo, submit it to the A&R people at the label, and there was a screening process that made sure that the bands that weren't ready didn't get heard.

Now, anybody with garage band, samples and a mic can inflict their music on the world. With mixed results. This makes it a lot harder for the good stuff to get heard and for people who spend years working on their skills to get heard or noticed over the shear ocean of mediocrity. And it's all for sale for .99 cents or less a download. The good and the bad.

My biggest complaint with the ongoing changes in music is that with so much instant availability to cheap music, our perceived value and appreciation for the great musicians and their music will be lost.

Like some other guy said, it's innovative and progressive because Radiohead is a pop rock band. It's not innovation when other people did it first, just when a mainstream band did.

BTW, the album is awful.

Garet, i'm really sorry you feel that way. I'm also really sorry you had to post it multiple times too.

You can't deny the fact that Radiohead has a HUGE cult fanbase, if anything, and without that, this venture wouldn't have been half as successful. I think this is a really interesting direction we're heading, and I can't help loving the fact that they very much stuck it to the man.

The only true issue here is the moral stature of the Radiohead fan or curious buyer. The distribution sans record company vacuum is gone in this case, but do those consumers in this download age understand the value of art?

(Keep your negatve opinions of Radiohead to yourself. I have no recollection of ever hearing them, so I'm not biased. It's not about how worthy they are of being paid to make music.)

I recently purchased and downloaded demo recordings from a favorite band of mine that were on a label, and are now independent. I would say I'm a big fan, willing to pay for the unpolished genesis of the band's well known catalog. I trust Radiohead fans would do the same. If this is the case, their marketing technique is successful.

This is no doubt a ploy to increase sales numbers. They probably want to compete with Prince in the way of getting tons of sales without making money on it.

The fact that news outlets covered this and actually claimed Radiohead was innovative just shows how out of touch with reality many news outlets are.

I only see one guy wearing Rancid shirts, actually. I think he has about 20 of them.
Radiohead are currently bigger than Rancid whether you like to believe it or not.
Slayer did a similar thing, leading up to the release of their album on September 11, 2001. In retrospect, the "drop the bomb" ad campaign I saw on some web sites was ill-timed.

I don't know people think Radiohead is doing something revolutionary. Smashing Pumpkins gave away a free album 7 years ago over the internet (Machina II).

i bought it online i took the store price of 10$ roughly and averaged it with 0$...that came out to a price of 5$, whiched i paid. its an ok album.

Canada's own Buck 65 gave away 2 albums last year on his site, and they were great. Because of this I choose to buy his offerings because it is always quality and I know it will be worth every penny. If there was a way to put my money directly into his pockets I would in a heartbeat. There can only be more great music from these bands if they are supported. Thanks Buck Love Ya!

I've noticed a lot of people saying that radiohead is only able to do this with the support of their record label, i just wanted to point out that as of my writing this, as far as i know radiohead is currently without a record label