Radiohead’s Free-for-all: Performance Art or New Business Model?

KNOWLEDGE@WHARTON—Radiohead, the British rock band, sent shock waves through the music industry recently when it announced that it would release its latest album online, without a record label, and let fans pay whatever they wanted to for it — including nothing at all. For Radiohead, this means that the group doesn’t have to pay recording, marketing or overhead costs and it gets to keep the entire price of each album sold, not just a small fraction of it. But what does this mean for the industry in general? As one AP reporter put it: “Depending on what side of the digital divide you sit, this action can mean one of two things, the end of the music business as we know it, or the dawn of the music business’s second life.” Knowledge@Wharton asked Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader and Don Huesman, senior director of information technology at Wharton, for their reactions to Radiohead’s move. An edited transcript follows the video. Read article.