Radiohead: MS4 Music 'The King Of Limbs'

Very Good Sample Response A/B: Industry/Music

B4. Explore how your chosen texts use digital technology in their marketing.

My three texts for this section are Lady Gaga’s 2011 album ‘Born This Way’, Radiohead’s 2011 album ‘The King of Limbs' and Nirvana’s 1991 album ‘Nevermind’. Each of my artists took different approaches to marketing with and without the use of digital technology.

Gaga uses digital technology such as the internet to sell her albums as well as making a retail copy. Her 2011 album ‘Born This Way’ sold 440,000 copies within two days via download on the Amazon website for a price of only 99 cents. A consequence of this new digital system and method for obtaining music is that fans can illegally download/ leak the album before the intended release date. Oxford band ‘Radiohead’ found a way around this problem when self-releasing their 7th album ‘In Rainbows’ (2007).

Breaking free of major labels and embracing digital technology Radiohead set up a website where they released ‘In Rainbows’ allowing their fans/ everyone to pay what they wanted for a digital copy, which let the fans decide how much the music was worth to them. This proved highly profitable for the band themselves and set a new industry model whereby the artists gained more profit and more control.

Lady Gaga is also well known for using Twitter to communicate with her social networking, teenage fans on a regular basis, creating a parasocial relationship with them. Overall the singer/ songwriter has 41,482,584 followers on the social networking site as well as other followers on other sites such as Facebook and Google+. The connection she has with her fans via the use of social media allows her to cultivate and reinforce a personal relationship with her fans to preserve her popularity and mainstream pop status. Digital technology therefore allows wider access and increases potential sales in the modern digital market.

Gaga’s success and popularity increased as she became more globally known through the use of digital technology. She released 5 singles over an 8 month period all accompanied with a music video, which can be found on her own YouTube channel. Repeated views increase her market value and maintain a level of popularity. The high production values together with the glamorous and provocative appearance of Gaga herself also made her videos compulsive viewing for her fans (Little Monsters as she calls them) on YouTube. She gains millions of hits per video and this encourages countless fans to create viral copycat productions which have increased her online presence immensely.

A band who didn’t follow this modern, mainstream method of marketing was Radiohead, an indie/ alternative rock band from Oxford, UK. Their self-promotion and self-releases of albums ‘In Rainbows’ (2007) and ‘The King of Limbs’ (2011), via their website allowed the release(s) to occur globally and at the same time see an increase in sales due to their established fanbase, cultivated via their major label EMI. ‘The King of Limbs’ sold an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 copies through the website alone. The experiment they conducted with the release of album 7 ‘In Rainbows,’ limited the possibility of illegal recordings/ leaks being distributed allowing the band more control in their output. This unique form of marketing resulted in positive and negative press coverage as a result of bypassing and not conforming to the usual record industry models. For the band themselves it allows more freedom and more profit, they have stated that they earned more money from their self-released albums – something the industry have historically depended upon.

As the band already had an established fan base, they didn’t accompany their 2011 album ‘The King Of Limbs’ with a tour and only released a niche, low budget, DIY music video for one track ‘Lotus Flower’, solely targeting their pre-existing fan base. Both Gaga and Radiohead gained and have sustained their fan bases and promoted their work(s) through the use of digital technology.

A band that didn’t have access to digital marketing during their career were ‘grunge’/ rock three-piece Nirvana. For their 1991 album ‘Nevermind’ they were totally reliant upon marketing via their major record label Geffen. Coverage from music press such as ‘NME’ and ‘Rolling Stone’ magazines, helped promote the bands profile but ‘word of mouth’ was essential in spreading the message about the bands work pre-internet as well as TV appearances and live touring. Due to this it took the band 5 months to get to number 1 on the Billboard 200 charts, whereas both ‘The King of Limbs’ and ‘Born This Way’ went straight to the top of the charts in their first week proving the effective use of digital technology in the music industry in todays modern marketplace.

Digital technology was not available during these times but their popularity is now widely promoted via ITunes and other online sites such as Facebook as a form of nostalgia for both those that enjoyed their music at the time and new fans. The suicide of lead vocal Kurt Cobain and the rise in sales post-death poses the statement that ‘artists make more money/ get more recognition once they’re dead’. This can be proven due to release of albums such as ‘Nirvana’s Greatest Hits’ released via online stores for the 20th Anniversary of Cobain’s death, promoting their work further with the use of digital technology.

Digital technology is highly used in order to market and promote artists in the music industry today as it has an immediate impact on fans and allows fans to access and download their work(s) in high quality, reducing the costs of production and distribution for music labels. The use of digital technology also allows for new artists to become widely known through social networking sites.

'In Rainbows': 7 years since Radiohead provided an alternative Record Industry Model

Seven years ago, Radiohead released 'In Rainbows' via their own website, allowing fans to pay as much or as little as they wished.

Some people hailed it as a revolution for the music industry, and a new model for other bands to follow. Others fretted that Radiohead were potentially destroying the careers of thousands of smaller bands by making music seem worthless. There was, it's fair to say, a lot of over-excitement.

Five years on, though, who was right? 'In Rainbows' was a hugely important, influential moment that should inspire today's bands for two reasons.

First: because it showed that the best response to music piracy is to explore new, legal ways to get music into fans' hands. Don't get hung up on the specific method used here – the pay-what-you-want 'honesty box' – but rather see it as a simple example of Radiohead trying something new.

Second: 'In Rainbows' absolutely didn't kill the idea that music should be paid for. What it did do, though, was show that the idea of setting a single, one-size-fits-all price for an album was long overdue a rethink. Not just because a lot of people wanted to pay less or nothing, but because plenty of fans wanted to pay more.

Before explaining those properly, it's worth remembering some of the criticism of 'In Rainbows' after its launch in October 2007. A Guardian piece that month linked Radiohead's scheme with Prince's decision to give his new album away with the Mail on Sunday, suggesting they'd "made it increasingly hard for new acts to survive".

Some big RAWK dinosaurs were also unimpressed. Gene Simmons of Kiss, for example: "That's not a business model that works. I open a store and say 'Come on in and pay whatever you want.' Are you on fucking crack? Do you really believe that's a business model that works?"

Others thought Radiohead didn't go far enough. Trent Reznor, for example, criticised 'In Rainbows' as "very much a bait and switch, to get you to pay for a MySpace quality stream as a way to promote a very traditional record sale".

Meanwhile, U2's manager Paul McGuinness reckoned the move had "backfired" citing piracy stats showing "60-70 per cent of the people who downloaded the record stole it anyway, even though it was available for free".

(In fairness, his client Bono stuck up for the band in a letter to the NME, saying they'd been "courageous and imaginative in trying to figure out some new relationship with their audience… Such imagination and courage are in short supply right now".)

It's true: a lot of people downloaded 'In Rainbows' for free, including on BitTorrent. In November 2007, market research firm comScore claimed that only 38 per cent of 'In Rainbows' downloaders had paid, while 62 per cent chose to get it for free – meaning an average price paid overall of $2.26 per download.

Radiohead quickly slammed that research as "wholly inaccurate", but some better stats came later from British collecting society MCPS-PRS and internet metrics firm Big Champagne, who estimated that 400,000 copies of 'In Rainbows' were downloaded on BitTorrent on its day of release alone. Over its first 24 days, the album notched up 2.3m torrent downloads.

A big fat failure, then? Not at all.

"In terms of digital income, we’ve made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever — in terms of anything on the Net. And that’s nuts," said Thom Yorke in December 2007, when interviewed by David Byrne for Wired Magazine.

In October 2008, Radiohead's publisher Warner Chappell revealed more stats on 'In Rainbows'' performance at a music industry conference in Iceland.

The album had been bought 3m times, including downloads, CDs and the £40 'Discboxes' that were pre-orderable when the original download went live. 1.75m of those sales were CDs, and 100,000 Discboxes (a cool £4m in gross revenues from the latter alone).

To put it another way: giving 'In Rainbows' away didn't make it worthless. In fact, it was worth a lot more to the band than their previous albums when they'd been signed to a record label.

It showed that a lot of fans really did value Radiohead's music – it helped that the album was great – but also that they valued it at different levels. Letting people choose what they wanted to pay, right up to the £40 Discbox, paid off.

What about ruining things for other bands? It's tough to make money from music in 2012, for reasons – yes, piracy – that existed well before 2007.

Making a career in music means hard work, forging a connection with fans (whether there are 50 of them or five million), trying new things, and making money in a bunch of different ways. iTunes downloads, Spotify streams, gig tickets, merchandise, CDs sold at gigs, YouTube ads, legal BitTorrent bundles, Kickstarter crowdfunding and many more.

US journalist Mike Masnick gave a famous 15-minute presentation at music biz conference Midem in 2009 about why bands should connect with fans and give them a reason to buy – based on a case study of Trent Reznor rather than Radiohead, interestingly.

But it's exactly what Radiohead did with 'In Rainbows'. The pay-what-you-want aspect isn't something to be followed slavishly in 2012: it's the willingness to try it and the connection with fans that made it successful that should be an inspiration.

In many ways, the equivalent of 'In Rainbows' in 2012 is Amanda Palmer's $1.2m Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, which is being hailed/criticised as a model for other artists in exactly the same way 'In Rainbows' was.

Compare this quote from Thom Yorke in that 2007 Wired interview – "It’s not supposed to be a model for anything else. It was simply a response to a situation" – with this from Palmer in 2012 about her own strategy:

"The truth is: there is no next model. Show me 1,000 talented musicians, each with a unique style and personality, and I’ll show you 1,000 ways to make a career in music…there is no longer an off-the-shelf solution."

'In Rainbows'' honesty box wasn't an off-the-shelf solution either. Rather than copy either, smaller bands should take inspiration instead from the general principles: connecting with fans, and being open to new ways of getting their music out there.

Also, perhaps treat Gene Simmons' views on digital business models with a pinch of salt. Or crack, according to preference.

Stuart Dredge: NME.com

Radiohead: 'The King of Limbs'

The King of Limbs is the eighth studio album by English rock band Radiohead, produced by Nigel Godrich. It was self-released on 18 February 2011 as a download in MP3 and WAV formats, followed by physical CD and 12" vinyl releases on 28 March, a wider digital release via AWAL, and a special "newspaper" edition on 9 May 2011. The physical editions were released through the band's Ticker Tape imprint on XL in the United Kingdom, TBD in theUnited States, and Hostess Entertainment in Japan.

Following the painstaking recording and relatively conventional rock instrumentation of In Rainbows, Radiohead employed a more spontaneous process to develop The King of Limbs, sampling their own recordings with turntablist techniques inspired by DJing. The band provided little information on the album, not even a track listing, before its release, and did not discuss it in detail until nearly eight months later. Singer Thom Yorke described it as an expression of "physical movements" and "wildness"; the title King of Limbs possibly refers to an oak tree in Wiltshire's Savernake Forest, thought to be 1,000 years old.

The King of Limbs has the shortest running time and track listing of any Radiohead album. As with 2000's Kid A, no singles were released, though a music video was released for the track "Lotus Flower". It received mostly positive reviews from critics, though opinion was more divided than for In Rainbows.The King of Limbs was nominated for five categories in the 54th Grammy Awards, including Best Alternative Music Album, and was named one of the best albums of 2011 by several music journals. It charted in the top ten in several countries and became a bestseller on vinyl.

The album was followed by a remix album, TKOL RMX 1234567, and a live video, The King of Limbs – From the Basement.

Release:

Radiohead announced The King of Limbs on their website on 14 February 2011 with a release date of 19 February, five days later. On 18 February, the band's blog, Dead Air Space, published a song from the album, "Lotus Flower", with an accompanying music video uploaded to Radiohead's official YouTube channel. The band released the album later that day - a day earlier than first announced - with guitarist Ed O'Brien writing: "It's Friday... It's almost the weekend...It's a full moon....You can download The King of Limbs now if you so wish!"

The download of The King of Limbs is DRM-free. The MP3 download costs £6, US$9, or €7; the WAV download costs £9, US$14, or €11. Customers could also order a special "newspaper edition" of the album, released 9 May 2011, for £30, US$48 or €36 with the MP3 download, and £33, US$53 or €39 with the WAV download (shipping included). The "newspaper" edition contains "two 10-inch vinyl records in a special record sleeve, many large sheets of artwork, 625 tiny pieces of artwork, a compact disc, and a colour piece of oxo-degradable plastic package".

To promote the CD and vinyl release of The King of Limbs, Radiohead distributed a free single-issue newspaper, the Universal Sigh, at record shops across the world on 28 March 2011. It is separate from the "newspaper" edition of The King of Limbs. Artist Stanley Donwood described the Universal Sigh (the title taken from lyrics to "Bloom") as "a 12-page tabloid, printed using web-offset lithography on newsprint paper, just like the LA Weekly or London Lite, or Daily Mail." The paper features artwork, poetry, and lyrics, along with short stories by Stanley Donwood, Jay Griffiths and Robert Macfarlane. The free newspaper concept came from Donwood witnessing "a seething mass of humanity at the top of the steps down to Oxford Circus tube station, where amongst the heaving throng of commuters were valiant distributors of London Lite and Metro, and the Evening Standard, attempting to hand them out." Donwood and Thom Yorke appeared in person to distribute copies of the Universal Sigh to fans in London.

In June 2011, Radiohead announced a series of remixes of tracks from the album. These remixes and others are compiled on the remix album TKOL RMX 1234567.^[

Radiohead performed The King of Limbs in its entirety for The King of Limbs – From The Basement, broadcast in July 2011 and released on DVD and Blu-ray in December 2011.

Wikipedia

MS4 - Text, Industry & Audience: Music

'A' Grade Exam Response

Section B: Industry & Audience

B4. Explore how your chosen texts use digital technology in their marketing. (30)

Digital technology such as the internet and online stores such as itunes all present new ways for a consumer to discover or buy new music.

Lady Gaga is a perfect example with her first album/CD 'The Fame' selling over 12 million copies with many of these downloaded from the internet and thus making it the most downloaded release of all time. As a consequence of this new digital system and method for obtaining music, fans of artists can now retrieve albums quickly without the need for going to a music store such as HMV. The internet was also used to promote her album sales with posters and the ability to listen to several of the tracks earlier than their official release on youtube, therefore promoting sales and interest to fans who will then go to buy the physical version of the album. Sites such as itunes also marketed 'The Fame' by creating billboards over their webpage and adding links to the itunes store to the Lady Gaga album once it was made available to boost sales to the consumer via convergence. Lady Gaga is also well known for using Twitter to communicate with her social networking teenage fans on a regular basis, in this way she continually cultivates and reinforces a personal relationship with her fans to preserve her popularity and mainstream pop status.

Her popularity gradually increased through successive single releases such as 'Just Dance', 'Papparazzi' and 'Pokerface'. The high production values together with the glamorous and provocative appearance of Lady Gaga herself also made her videos compulsive viewing for her fans on youtube, where she now has her own channel.  She gains millions of hits per video and encourages countless of fans to create viral copycat productions that have increased her online profile immensely.

A band, however, who did not follow this modern mainstream method of marketing was Radiohead who are an indie/alternative rock band from Oxford UK. Instead of using this same method as artists in the mainstream such as Lady Gaga, Radiohead themselves marketed their new album release 'In Rainbows' by self-promotion through youtube with a number of tracks played live. They also made their album available via download only through their own website and allowed the fans/consumers to pay whatever price they wanted to including nothing and download the recording quickly and immediately and in high quality without even leaving their homes. Releasing the album in this way also allowed the release to occur globally at the same time, increasing overall sales (1.2 million copies) and limiting the possibility of the illegal recordings being distributed. Although this unique style of marketing did not initially produce a profit for the band, they gained a great deal of negative, as well as positive, press coverage as a result for bypassing the usual record industry models. Live performance appearances also helped promote the release on the SkyArts satellite channel to a more adult highbrow audience in direct contrast to the way that Lady Gaga was marketed.

After its initial download only release, 'In Rainbows' was released with a more mainstream physical CD release available in music stores and other online sites such as itunes. The release, even though initially only available as a download, still gained chart success and also became the bands most successful release to date. Clearly allowing the fans/audience to pay whatever they wanted to did not damage physical or chart sales and signalled a warning to the record industry who are presently struggling to recapture a sales market that is falling due to digital file sharing and bootlegging.

A band that did not have access to digital marketing during their heyday was 'grunge'/metal three-piece Nirvana. For their releases in the early 1990's, such as 'Nevermind', they were totally reliant upon marketing via their major label record company Geffen. The underground music scene and music press coverage also helped promote the bands profile but 'word of mouth' was essential in spreading the message about the authenticity of the band and their blistering live performances in the days before online technology became commonplace.

Digital technology was not available during these times but their popularity is now widely promoted via itunes and other online sites such as Facebook as a form of nostalgia for both those that enjoyed their music at the time and new fans. Clearly the suicide of the lead singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain has continued to assist the mythology of Nirvana and generate sales of all of their releases on the internet and perpetuate the appeal for 'grunge' music in general. After his death albums such as 'Nirvana's Greatest Hits' were released on online stores and with the 20th Anniversary of his death looming the internet is likely to spread promotion further.

Digital technology is highly used in order to market and promote artists in the music industry today as it is cheap, immediate and of a high quality reducing the costs of production and distribution for music labels. It allows for new artists to become widely known through social networking sites as Arctic Monkeys did with Myspace. 

Radiohead - Digital Technology

MS4 - Text, Industry & Audience: Music

Exam Approaches

Your 3 Focus Texts for Industry are:
Radiohead: 'The King of Limbs'
Lady Gaga: 'Born This Way'
Nirvana: 'Nevermind'

Details about the release patterns and success of each release are well documented on wikipedia and will provide a good basis for discussion of the central issues (use the links above): 

• Compare and contrast how audiences responded to the differing ways that the Music Industry treated these albums/CD's release
• What were the sales generated by these releases?
• What were the markets/fans for each individual release?
• What was the impact upon the Music Industry as a result of these releases?
• How did these releases appeal to differing audiences?
• What were the marketing strategies for each release?
• How was each release promoted via singles and/or video production?

Take notes on the production, promotion and markets for each release:

• Analyse/examine/discuss the production values of these artists videos
• What are the genre conventions and stylistics for each artist?
• Who would they appeal to? Why?
• Mainstream/Niche/Alternative market? Discuss
• Reasons for success? Discuss
• Reasons for popularity? Discuss
• How far did advances in technology play in the distribution and success of these releases for each artist? 
• How far has the Industry changed over time? Refer to technological advances
• What did fans/audiences want?
• Explore the uses and gratifications of each text for those audience

B1. How important is the internet to your selected industry? Refer to your chosen texts in your answer. [30]

B2. Explore the impact of digital technologies on your selected industry. [30]

B3. With reference to your selected industry, explore how far your chosen texts are global [30]

B4. Explore how your chosen texts use digital technology in their marketing. [30]

MS4 - Text, Industry & Audience: Music - Spotify/Nirvana

Spotify boss Daniel Ek: 'The music industry is entering a golden age'

Spotify CEO and founder Daniel Ek has said that he believes the music industry is about to enter "a golden age".

Ek, whose company has enjoyed a year of rapid growth and now boasts over three million paying subscribers, has said that he firmly believes that if his company and other social networking sites can help increase the amount of social interaction online users engage in, then they will definitely buy more music.

Asked by Grammy.com about his thoughts on how his company and the social sharing of music could help the music industry, Ek replied: "We look at the sharing of music as really, really important for our business. We've found that the more social our users are, the faster they grow their own music library. And the faster they grow their music library, the faster they become paying customers."

He continued: "Personally speaking, I am more bullish on the future of the music industry than ever before, and I think we're kind of entering a golden age in music."

Ek also addressed the claims that have been made by a series of music industry figures, that Spotify hinders, rather than helps artists sell records.

He said: "I'd also like to address people who think they'll gain sales by not being on Spotify. There's not a shred of data to suggest that. In fact, all the information available points to streaming services helping to drive sales. Album unit sales were up in the U.S. in 2011, the year Spotify launched, for the first time since 2004. More than a dozen albums which debuted at Number One have been available on Spotify at launch."

Ek added that his company wanted musicians to "win democratically" and that the money Spotify paid in royalty cheques would continue to grow.

He said: "Spotify users are helping pay a ton of money back to the industry. You're talking 10 million active users, 2.5 million subscribers — most of them paying $120 (£76) a year, which is double the amount of your average iTunes user. At Spotify, we really want you to democratically win as a musician. The royalty cheques we're paying out now — of course we're happy that there's progress being made, but it's still only in its early days, and it will keep growing."

NME: 4/1/12

'The King of Limbs': Radiohead - Music: Industry & Audience

Related post: here

Review Extract:

Bands that embrace the medium of the internet tend to use it as a promotional tool, a platform for developing its brand or for communicating with its audience. But I remember when I first visited radiohead.com, around the turn of the century, when the website was a frustrating labyrinth of mysterious links and cryptic critiques of modern consciousness. As a branding or promotional tool, the site was essentially useless, but Radiohead’s identity only functions as a brand in spite of itself. It’s this “in spite of itself” that begins to explain why the band’s attitude hasn’t poisoned its success.

Radiohead are constantly in the process of defining and redefining what it means to make great albums, to refine a sonic aesthetic, to carve beauty out of elements and ideas that have real weight. But throughout this process of definition, the band constantly struggles against being defined, not only by categories and systems that have nothing to do with its work, but also by the characteristics that the work itself has brought into being. It is a strange, advanced sort of perfectionism, a persistent dissatisfaction with existence that expresses itself more strongly in The King of Limbs than it has in any of their work in years.

More here

MS4 - Text, Industry & Audience: Radiohead/Nirvana - (Industry/Audience)

NME: October 19, 2011

Strong sales of Radiohead, Adele and Arctic Monkeys' new albums have helped to see vinyl LPs record their best sales figures for six years.

According to the Official Charts Company, sales of vinyl albums in 2011 have already outsold the total for the whole of 2010, with over 240,000 LPs shifted, compared to 234,000 in 2010.

If the current sales continue, then sales of vinyl albums are likely to exceed 300,000 for the first time since 2005, when over 351,000 albums were sold.

Radiohead's 'The King Of Limbs' has been the spearhead for the increase in vinyl album sales, selling over 20,000 copies alone, more than 10 times what Adele's '21' has sold, the second best selling album on vinyl of 2011.

Other artists to enjoy strong vinyl sales are PJ Harvey, Beady Eye and Bon Iver.

The 10 best selling vinyl albums of 2011 thus far are as follows:

1. Radiohead – 'The Kings Of Limbs'

2. Adele – '21'

3. Beady Eye – 'Different Gear, Still Speeding'

4. Arctic Monkeys – 'Suck It And See'

5. PJ Harvey – 'Let England Shake'

6. Bon Iver – 'Bon Iver'

7. Alex Turner – 'Submarine OST'

8. Kate Bush – 'Director's Cut'

9. Elbow – 'Build A Rocket Boys!'

10. Nirvana – 'Nevermind'

Radiohead: 'The King of Limbs' - From The Basement

The King of Limbs: Live from the Basement is a 2011 live video album by the English alternative rock band Radiohead. It includes performances of all eight tracks from The King of Limbs, plus singles "The Daily Mail" and "Staircase"; the DVD and Blu-ray editions include an additional performance of Record Store Day single "Supercollider", plus a download code and a 32-page hardback book of photos from the recording session. The album will also be available via iTunes.

Originally filmed as a television special, From the Basement was aired on a number of channels internationally, but it ran into problems with its planned British distributor BBC Worldwide, who cancelled its planned air date on July 1, 2011. The band have uploaded selected songs from the performance to YouTube, and in August 2011 they uploaded the entire set (not including "Supercollider") for a limited time on YouTube.

Radiohead - The King of Limbs - From The... by Momirski

The Impact of 'Digital' on The Music Industry

Source: infographicboard.com via Infographic on Pinterest

How The Internet Has Rocked The Music Industry

Source: mashable.com via Christina on Pinterest

The Evolution of the Online Music Industry

Source: kazagold.com via Meagan on Pinterest

Radiohead: 'The King of Limbs'

Will Radiohead's The King of Limbs save the music industry?

Radiohead's The King of Limbs, which breaks with the honesty-box tactic of In Rainbows, may provide clues as to how the industry could find salvation in a time of flagging sales.

Can Radiohead rescue two ailing industries? Tomorrow night sees the Brit awards take place in London, and with admirable intent, the plan is to focus strictly on the music: the show is being moved from Earls Court to the O2, presenter James Corden is under instruction not to insult the talent and the evening will climax with the announcement of album of the year. But this is set against a 7% decline in sales last year, a growing realisation that digital revenue will always struggle to replace the once lucrative CD market, and a lineup intended to celebrate the best in British music, but which boasts the likes of Mumford & Sons. If that's the best we can muster, the feeling is that the industry really is broken.

So it's with impeccable timing that this morning Radiohead announced on their website that on Saturday, their new album will be available for download. The King of Limbs will cost just £6 as an MP3, or £9 if you want a higher quality WAV version. Or you can spend £33 to get the WAV version plus, in two months' time, an edition they're calling "the world's first Newspaper Album". This comprises two clear 10in vinyl records in a purpose-built record sleeve, a CD, and lots of artwork. Presumably, a super-deluxe version will be announced in coming months that will see Thom Yorke appear as a hologram at the foot of your bed to sing the thing.

This release breaks with the honesty-box tactic the band initially employed for In Rainbows in 2007, but emulates the approach of creating a lavish physical format that the most loyal fans will feel they have to own, whatever the cost. In Rainbows was licensed to record companies throughout the world in one-off agreements; in the UK, only the independent label XL enjoyed the flexibility and sensibility to handle such an arrangement.

It seems a canny notion, and while the band's manager, Brian Message, has remained tight-lipped about the commercial success of In Rainbows, it's hard to think that Radiohead will lose out financially this time either. What's not yet clear is why it's called a "Newspaper Album". But newspapers – it's no secret – are suffering the same sort of woes as themusic industry. Is there some hidden clue here for how the print business will find salvation, too?

Of course, as with In Rainbows, what's not first discussed with The King of Limbs is what the thing will sound like. Will it be the epic rock record that some have rumoured, which the industry would so dearly love, a sign that the UK can still produce bands that will tick a box at the Brits or the Grammys? Or will it be more in the tradition of Kid A, a determinedly singular album? Bearing in mind something Thom Yorke said last year, it's unlikely that Radiohead will be going out of their way to offer succour to the former camp: "It's simply a matter of time – months rather than years – before the music business establishment completely folds."

guardian.co.uk: 14/2/2011