Selling The King of Limbs

Today Radiohead announced their new album, with a very minimalist post on their official site:  "Thank You For Waiting"

The post clicks through to the dedicated The King of Limbs site (a bit like Drake did last year), where, once you've selected your location, you can pre-order it for download on Saturday.

The options are pretty sparse - digital only at £6 or £9, depending on file size, and also as "the world's first* Newspaper Album" (*probably - I love the 'probably'), which is a physical package and will be delivered in May.  'Physical' buyers get the digital version to be going on with.

I love the speed of this - I love how they've effectively said 'We're ready - here you are'.  I'm sure this will happen far more; it's a good way to counter leaks and piracy too.

I wish they could have done like Lady Gaga did on Friday when she said 'Here's my new single - listen here, and download here', but I guess that there are more logistical problems with larger downloads, and they're selling it directly rather than through iTunes.  Presumably once they have the list of buyers they can stagger the emails for the download code so as to not overwhelm their servers.  & since they're selling it directly they get a larger share of the revenues.

Incidentally Gaga's tactic gave her the fastest selling single ever on iTunes.

Also - see my post about In Rainbows in 2007