Some, like Prince, have given away front-line product free. Others, like Tori Amos and Alanis Morissette, have offered up Web-only exclusives, also free.
Then there have been the famous holdouts: Metallica, which joined the fight to shut down Napster, and the Beatles, who, despite years of rumors to the contrary, are still conspicuously absent from iTunes and the rest of the legal Web.
Now comes Radiohead with potentially the most ground-breaking move of all: putting its new album, "In Rainbows," out there for fans to pay what they want.
This museum model of a "suggested donation" is entirely untested, and the industry will be watching closely to see how the experiment plays out.
That said, it is important to keep in mind that this is a niche play from a band that already has a huge, loyal audience, not to mention ownership of its own masters. Whether fans pay for this album will have little bearing on the decisions of rank-and-file artists who don't have Radiohead's clout.
Nor is this move likely to affect the labels' digital strategies. Even if the gambit is wildly successful, it will not change the fact that the industry is staring down the barrel of free-falling CD sales and insufficient digital volume to make up the slack.
Link to eMarketer Article
Still, it will be interesting to see what happens with "In Rainbows." Some of Radiohead's legions may actually pony up some serious dough, if nothing else to reward the band for not treating its fans as if they were criminals.
While most fans will probably help themselves to the album gratis, inevitably there will be a few crackpots who will pay obscene sums for it, maybe for the attention, or maybe just because they have money to burn and can't help themselves.
It will take only a few of those to give Radiohead a much bigger and more immediate payday than it would have ever gotten from Capitol, its former label.
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