What "in rainbows" will do to the music industry

So, ok. I think just about everyone I know that I've seen in the past few days has to know how excited I was for today. Why, might you ask? Because today is the day that the music industry is changed forever (and for the better).

It would have been enough had one of my favorite bands, Radiohead, to release a hell of a seventh studio album, but they had to break every economic standard that the music industry has been counting on for the past five decades. In Rainbows stands to do that and more.

"How come I end up where I started?" the band asks in the opening cut "15 Steps." A legitimate question, and it is one record executives will be asking in the upcoming days, months, and years. Techcrunch guru and noted blogger Michael Arrington said:

2007 is turning out to be a terrible year for the music industry. Or rather, a terrible year for the the music labels.

The DRM walls are crumbling. Music CD sales continue to plummet rather alarmingly. Artists like Prince and Nine Inch Nails are flouting their labels and either giving music away or telling their fans to steal it. Another blow earlier this week: Radiohead, which is no longer controlled by their label, Capitol Records, put their new digital album on sale on the Internet for whatever price people want to pay for it.

The economics of recorded music are fairly simple. Marginal production costs are zero: Like software, it doesn’t cost anything to produce another digital copy that is just as good as the original as soon as the first copy exists, and anyone can create those copies (meaning there is perfect competition and zero barriers to entry).

Dorothy and Todo, we're not in Kansas anymore. Gone are the days of record companies holding rule over bands on how, when, and for how much will you make when we generously publish your music and make bank. Radiohead bucks this trend by announcing on their blog 10 days till the albums online only, digital, DRM free release.

Hello everyone.

Well, the new album is finished, and it's coming out in 10 days;

We've called it In Rainbows.

Love from us all.

Jonny

This is directly from the source, completely handled by the band, straight to the consumer. Record industry. It's time to wake up. N.I.N. plans to do the same, and more band will jump on this after they see how successful it is for the band and their fans.

So how is the album? Reviews, as expected, have been glowing.

The Guardian Unlimited gives it five stars:

Witty, romantic, life-affirming: you don't need to be an expert in the minutae of their back catalogue to know that these are not adjectives readily associated with Radiohead. But then, in the years since OK Computer propelled them to superstardom, you could say the same about the phrase "consistent album", yet that's precisely what In Rainbows seems to be. Whatever you paid, it's hard to imagine feeling short-changed.

My friend, and self proclaimed Radiohead addict, Nolan T. Jones said:

It’s a good album. Hell, it’s a fantastic **** album. It does exactly what a Radiohead album has always done—it makes you feel the whole way through. It’s an emotional journey, and it charts new territory for the band. Obviously an initial review of an album means very little—classics grow on us. New things appear in tracks we’ve heard a hundred times and amaze us. Also, in terms of my own words, the mysticism of music is interpretation.

For me? If you like Radiohead, you'll love In Rainbows. It picks up perfectly from where Kid A, Hail to the Chief left off. I'll let the band really say how I feel with the concluding verse from the final cut "Videotape":

No matter what happens now
I won't be afraid
Because I know today has been the most perfect day I've ever seen.

--

Today's M-W quote of the day strikes me as eerily similar to a certain group I've been with for the past few years.

"You get fifteen democrats in a room, and you get twenty opinions.

Senator Patrick Leahy, May 1990"

Hah.