When it came time for Radiohead to release their last album, “In Rainbows“, they decided to go against the mainstream way of selling it and offered the whole album for download, at whatever price you chose. Similar to priceline.com, except William Shatner wont let you choose your roundtrip flight to Hawaii for .01 cent. In fact many people (like myself) put in zero cents and still downloaded it.
Stupid, some said. Not the way you do business! said many others. Regardless, the bottom line is that Radiohead made some serious cash off that endeavor. After flooding the market with 128 kbps MP3s, they announced the higher rez version and the actual CD for sale. It effectively nullified illegal downloads, and increased their visibility as well. Their new online endeavor? Just as genius.
They put out just a single, titled Nude, and are allowing people to download each instrument and vocal track separately (for a small fee) so you can remix it, and upload it to their site where fellow fans can vote on their favorite. Again, increasing public visibility and awareness, as well as making money without releasing a whole new album, or paying for marketing, CD printing costs, etc. Partake of the musical goodness here.