Radiohead just released its latest album, The King Of Limbs, today online. It’s a day earlier than expected, and unlike their last release, In Rainbows, where they band offered a “name your price” model for the record, The King of Limbs has a firm price: $9 for an MP3 and $14 for a WAV (CD quality) format. Not a big surprise, the “name your price” experiment was a worthy one, but a model that is impossible for a band that’s not Radiohead to replicate and remain solvant.
Physical copies of The King Of Limbs will be made available in stores later in March, but it’s quite telling that Radiohead is prioritizing online distribution for the second release in a row.
Similarly, check out the following chart, swiped from businessinsider.com which maps out the “Death of the Music Industry”
Not sure if the chart is documenting the death of the industry per se, but the certain death of physical music formats for mass consumption, and perhaps the concept of mass -market music in general.
