As many of you may have read, the band Radiohead recently sent a shot across the bow of the current recording industry power structure by releasing the album "In Rainbows" on a "pay what you want" basis. At first, I reacted with a "what?" and then after ruminating for a few minutes it became a "how brilliant!" It seems to me that Radiohead is tapping into the famous long tail concept so prevalent in search engine marketing today. If you allow people to pay what they prefer, the universe of buyers will grow tremendously to the point that those people way down at the end of the long tail paying only $.10 or $.50 will still accumulate to be far more in total than the universe being forced to pay a set price. Sounds like Radiohead took one right out of the Google playbook. Although they did something that on its face would be considered oddball to the establishment, in the end it may prove to be genius.
Due to its electronic distribution, sales figures were quick to come and Radiohead sold 1.2 million copies in roughly the first 72 hours. In addition to the sales, just pure buzz on the web has to have given a huge boost to their overall brand. Check out a query on "Radiohead" on Google Trends:
