In Rainbows by Radiohead

As pretty much everyone knows by now, Radiohead released their new album, In Rainbows, today. The album isn’t available in stores or on iTunes, only directly from Radiohead. The band basically shocked the music industry when they announced on October 1st that they would be releasing this album themselves, without the backing of a label. A much bigger deal was the fact that there would be no set price for this album. Instead, Radiohead believed that people, when given the choice, would pay a fair price for the album.

This is genius, and actually works, for so many reasons. First, they didn’t release any promotional copies to radio stations, stream new songs on MySpace (they don’t even have an official page), or allow the album to leak in any way. They merely announced 9 days ago that they had a new album coming out and told you where you could get it.

I don’t want to go into a track by track assessment of the album. I’ve already read enough blogs doing that. Most of them did a great job doing so.

The reviews that have interested me the most on this topic are actually from marketing blogs. Cory Treffiletti, one of my favorite industry writers, recently posted about Radiohead’s release and raised several questions, one of which was basically, is this the new music industry model for new albums? While this is an interesting question, I think it really misses the point.

The point is this. There is no model.

This isn’t just for the record industry. It’s becoming true of all types of media. From movies, to television, to radio, to yes, the record industry. The old way of doing things isn’t working and people are searching feverishly for the new way to do things. But why look for a new model that will one day just be outdated and irrelevant?

This is such an exciting time in media and business in general, not because we are looking for new business models, but because we can be completely creative with how we promote and market each and every new product.

So when another band releases a new album, why should they follow what Radiohead has done? Think of a new way to promote and sell your album. There is no model. Creativity is the model and it doesn’t need to resemble what has been done in the past or what others are doing. It just needs to work for the consumer.

Yes, this is not always the most efficient way of doing business, and some may say sounds a bit naive. But what are the other options?