MUSICIANS and music publishers had mixed feelings about Radiohead’s experiment. The experiment involved allowing people to download and chose how they opt to pay the British band’s new album In Rainbows.

Excerpt from an AFP story:

British rock group Radiohead have drawn a mixed reaction from fans and fellow musicians with an experiment letting listeners decide the price of their latest album, reports said Thursday.

Other artists are said to be studying the novel sales strategy — labelled a publicity stunt by some — of allowing fans to pay whatever they want for “In Rainbows,” which which went on sale online on Wednesday.

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By Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net

OK, this will keep music labels thinking, “Why didn’t we think of that?”

Based on this story from Pitchfork, Radiohead is releasing its new album, “In Rainbows?,” in three formats: a downloadable MP3 format that is DRM-free, a deluxe Discbox that could be pre-ordered, and a CD that is coming out sometime in 2008.

You could already pre-order the download from their official site.

What’s really cool is that Radiohead is letting you decide how much you want to pay: “It’s up to you.” This means that if you’re really a cheapskate you could actually get the album for free, apart from the transaction charge on your credit card.

Pitchfork writes:

What Radiohead’s doing here is actually pretty cool. Rather than preface their new album’s release with the usual three months of press ballyhoo, only to have it leak at some random time before it comes out, they’ve kept it completely under wraps, then essentially gone and leaked it themselves. What’s more, they’ve turned this into a moral question of sorts, by giving us the freedom to pay actual money for what amounts to an album leak.

Only a band in Radiohead’s position could pull a trick like this. Well played, gentlemen.

Now, say “OK Computer!”