I heard on NPR today that Radiohead is releasing a new album. Well, what’s so interesting about that? They are making the album available for download on their website and, here’s the interesting part, they let you decide what you want to pay for the recording. Fans can still buy CD’s and such when the album is in full circulation, but the digital version of the album is free-or-$1-or- $100-or whatever you decide to pay! Interesting.

It is no secret that I just released a new album and I thought long and hard about releasing it solely in digital format. (But, unlike Radiohead, I wasn’t going to give it away for free!) I ended up getting CD’s because of this simple fact - only a small percentage (12% or something) of consumers purchase their music in digital format via services like iTunes and Rhapsody. I am a member of that small group…I haven’t bought a CD in almost 2 years.

It should be fun to see how the music industry changes over the next few years. Perhaps the record companies, mostly a group of evil bastards, will start to lose some power? Perhaps not. Hats off to Radiohead for being a mainstream band that is doing something different - may you sell a million records with not a single penny going to a record company.