The highly-respected Canadian musician Jane Siberry has been doing this for a few years now, and she offered her entire back catalog up in her “name your own price” business model.
Yeah, most average people have never heard of Jane Siberry, but she is a Name (even if not to the general “you”) and I just thought it was worth mentioning. The members of Radiohead would certainly know who Jane is, maybe they got the idea from her.
An excellent idea I think. I have hundreds of CDs, I really don’t want any more. MP3s all the way, I haven’t used my CD player in years.
I listened to it 1.5 times this morning and it’s killing me right now that I can’t have it playing at work. It’s so consistently lush and is a much more beautiful album than Hail To The Thief was. “Nude” is mind-blowing. “Videotape” is fantastic. I’ve heard a few of these songs live, and I’m surprised at how well they’ve been realized on this album.
I’m now eagerly awaiting my discbox set in December!
I fear Radiohead are giving the finger to me, as I’ve tried with three different browsers to purchase this album, I’ve gotten to the shopping cart page, and I can never get past that. Actually now I can’t even get past the main page www.inrainbows.com because it’s suddenly begun asking me for my username/password to “log into the secured area.”
Eh? 
Probably justthat the site got so much activity that it broke the internets.
Poor me. 
After the Sony copy protection scandal , I’d prefer never to buy a CD again. I don’t own a CD player so I listen to all my music on my computer, and that incident made me feel that I can’t trust that CDs will be safe.
I wanted to buy this just to support the concept, but I don’t really know how much I paid in relation to how much albums generally cost. It was asking for British pounds, and I put in 7. How much are regular CDs in the UK?
It’s downloading now. Very cool concept, and good for them!
Love. It.
Lush, lush, lush.
FINALLY was able to download at about 9 PST last night.
Usually between about £11 and £16 (for new releases).
Thanks. Then I guess I severely underpaid at 7 (which I was figuring was roughly $14.00). But, I thought that since:
I wouldn’t pay regular price no matter what. It’s nice to have a comparison though. Man, CDs are expensive in the UK! They’re far too expensive here, but figure a conversion of a rough double ($22.00 - $32.00), that’s way more expensive than new release CDs in the US.
I bought this because it’s a great concept and I wanted to support it/them, but I do know just enough about the band to know that they’re well-respected and intelligent, and not just some noise that would make me cringe. In other words, I wouldn’t have bought from just any old band, especially not a big name, male-fronted band, no matter how much I wanted to support the concept.
I haven’t yet unzipped the file. I will.
I’m not a fan of the band, but this is easily their best record since Ok Computer.
I still haven’t got my download info. >___<
It’s cool that they released the CD by download, but did they have to make it so damn hard to download?
I think you paid in a fair manner. That was what they were asking: how much is this worth? You told them. Radiohead have a very ethical policy - I’ve seen them play several times, and whenever they can, they control the concession stands, and give people booze and food for a decent price. At one outdoor gig they even controlled the portable toilets, and wow, were they nice (for an outdoor gig).
Hell yeah. That’s why [del]I[/del] some people in this country have no compunction about getting albums for free. Not that I would condone this on the SDMB.
Actually, iTunes has started to change this - the big retailers have got to sort their shit out, or they’ll be out of business very soon. The supermarkets have also started stocking (fairly crappy) CDs, but the result is that prices are sliding downwards. Very slowly.