Radiohead to release In Rainbows in ten days, at the buyer's price

Jonny Greenwood posted on Dead Air Space, the band's blog, at nine minutes past midnight on Monday 1 October that Radiohead's seventh album is finished and out in ten days. Hello everyone. Well, the new album is finished, and it's coming out in 10 days; We've called it In Rainbows. Love from us all. Jonny¹⁵

The post links to an order page where the price box for the download is empty, with a question mark beside it. Click the question mark and the page says only It's up to you.⁷ A buyer can pay anything, or nothing at all, plus a transaction fee shown at the checkout. The download, the album's ten songs, arrives on 10 October. Spin reports the files will be DRM-free MP3s.

The discbox costs £40 with postage and is made to order. It holds the album on CD and on two heavyweight 12-inch records, a second enhanced CD with photographs, artwork and eight more new songs, and booklets of artwork and lyrics, all in a hardback book and slipcase. Those eight songs, from “MK 1” to “4 Minute Warning”, are not in the download. The box comes with the download and ships on or before 3 December.

Radiohead have no record company. Their EMI contract ran out after Hail to the Thief. For now the band's site is the only place selling In Rainbows, and a CD in the shops is planned for early 2008. Nigel Godrich produced it, as he did Hail to the Thief. Most of the ten songs were played on the 2006 tour.

There are no advance copies, no streams and no press access. The band's publicists say the whole world, journalists included, hears the album at the same moment on 10 October.

Nothing sold on the band's site counts towards the charts either, because the site is not a chart-reporting retailer. Meriel Blackburn, head of chart operations at the Official Charts Company, told NME a ruling on whether the download and the box meet the rules is due soon.

The news ends a week of coded messages on the band's site and a countdown at radioheadlp7.com that the band disowned as a hoax. Within hours, orders slowed the site to a crawl. Greenwood apologised that it was busier than expected and should clear soon, adding I sound like a bouncer. Get behind the rope. No denim.⁶

In Rainbows: tracklist