For the majority of you who paid nothing for Radiohead’s most recent album, In Rainbows, you may be sad to learn that the UK based band has no future plans to offer any similar promotion in the future.
Lead singer, Thom Yorke, called the revolutionary experiment a “one-off” thing.
“It was one of those things where we were in the position of everyone asking us what we were going to do,” Yorke told the Hollywood Reporter.” I don’t think it would have the same significance now anyway, if we chose to give something away again. It was a moment in time.”
While Radiohead is calling this just a “moment in time” it seems some other artists, most recently Nine Inch Nails, have adopted and fully understand the free music theory. Hopefully, artists will continue to be as gratuitous as Radiohead has been in the past, as they move into the future.
Read [Reuters]
erm, neither of those mentioned were given away free – radiohead said you could pay what you wanted for the album, but you had to pay, and nin only gave away 1/3 of the complete 'ghosts' package, so was more of a free incentive to buy the rest.
the charlatans gave their last album away for free through xfm, and that was totally free.
i find it only reasonable they would ask money for their work. Doesn't everyone?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????