The great riddle facing the record industry in the digital age has been pricing -- Napster and its ilk offered up music for "free" in the late 1990s, while major labels largely have clung to an average of $13 for CDs despite plummeting sales and seasons of downsizing.
Now, one of the most acclaimed rock bands in the world, Radiohead, is answering that marketplace riddle with a shrug: "It's up to you," reads a message on the Web page where fans can pre-order the band's seventh album and pay whatever they choose, including nothing.
The British band that twice has been nominated for a best-album Grammy will side-step the conventional industry machinery Oct. 10 by releasing "In Rainbow" as a digital download with no set price. The album will be available only from the band and the band's official site .
It might sound like a gimmicky promotion, but industry observers Monday framed it in more historical terms -- Radiohead, they said, is the right band at the right time to blaze a trail of its own choosing.
"This is all anybody is talking about in the music industry today," said Bertis Downs, the longtime manager of R.E.M., the veteran alt-rock band inducted in 2007 into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. "This is the sort of model that people have been talking about doing, but this is the first time an act of this stature has stepped up and done it. ... They were a band that could go off the grid, and they did it."
Another high-profile manager said he was still trying to process the boldness of the Radiohead venture: "My head is spinning, honestly," said Kelly Curtis, who represents Seattle band Pearl Jam. "It's very cool and very inspiring, really."
Radiohead is hardly abandoning the idea of making money.
The Web site also will sell a deluxe edition of "In Rainbow" that comes with versions in three formats (CD, vinyl and download) along with eight bonus songs and a lavish hardcover book with lyrics, photos and a slipcase. That package cost 40 British pounds (about $82).
In upcoming weeks, Courtyard Management, which represents the band, reportedly will negotiate with labels about a conventional release for "In Rainbow" that would put it on store shelves in 2008. Sources with the band acknowledge that the major labels might balk at the notion of releasing an album that has been available for free for months. Still, previous Radiohead albums collectively sell about 300,000 copies per year, according to Nielsen SoundScan, so "In Rainbow" still should have value at the cash register.
"Only a band in Radiohead's position could pull a trick like this," is how Pitchforkmedia.com summed it up Monday. That's because the band became a free agent after its contract with EMI expired with its most recent album, "Hail to the Thief, " in 2003. That set the stage for a one-band revolution, even if the five band members don't see it that way themselves.
"It's more of an experiment; the band is not fighting for the sake of the fight or trying to lead a revolution," said their spokesman, Steve Martin of the New York publicity company Nasty Little Man.
The group declined comment Monday.
Radiohead isn't the only group taking bold steps to keep pace with the digital age. R&B star Prince, for instance, has taken a maverick path by giving copies of one album away as an insert in a major British newspaper or as an extra to anyone who bought a seat at his concert tour. Prince took considerable heat from retailers for the U.K. give-away.
Then there's the bold business model of New Orleans rapper 'Lil Wayne, who made dozens of tracks available for free via the Internet as a means to cement his stardom. Even icon Bruce Springsteen seems to see the changing times by giving away a digital download of his new song, "Radio Nowhere."
Geoff Mayfield, director of charts for Billboard, pointed out that Radiohead is not unique because singer-songwriter Jane Siberry did a similar " optional payment download" a few years ago.
Radiohead has sold close to 9 million albums in the U.S. alone and three of its CDs have debuted in the Top 10 on the Billboard album charts. The group has a reputation for music daring that has earned it "relationship fans," core loyalists that skew older, travel to see them play live and urgently seek out the latest music upon release. Those fans, Mayfield said, are not the type to take the new music and leave the Radiohead "tip jar" empty.
"If that loyalty dictates consumer behavior," Mayfield said, "a good number are going to pay what's considered a fair price as opposed to two cents."
This brave new world is a harsh one for the traditional recording industry. The major labels that enjoyed huge profits in the 1980s as fans replaced their music collections with CDs have suffered over the past decade as a new generation of fans plucked their hit songs from the Internet, often without paying for them. There have been steady declines in recent years and, as of mid-year 2007, CD sales were off by 19.3 percent from the same sales period in 2006. And there's intense competition from video games and DVDs.
Some pundits say that while Radiohead's move might have been a sharp detour for an established band, it was hardly a path newer acts could follow. Curtis, the Pearl Jam manager, said that years on a major label roster established Radiohead and made it possible for it to buck the system.
"It's the newer bands I really feel sorry for," Curtis said.
Pearl Jam and other groups with intense followings, such as the Dave Matthews Band, R.E.M., Metallica and Nine Inch Nails, likely will learn from Radiohead's experience, Curtis said: "Everyone will keep an eye on this because this is the most exciting thing we've seen to this point."
