Thom Yorke tells David Byrne the In Rainbows price was Chris Hufford's idea

Letting buyers name their own price for In Rainbows was the idea of Chris Hufford, one of Radiohead's managers, Thom Yorke tells David Byrne. Wired put their conversation online today for its January issue. The band were still asking Hufford whether he was sure while the site was being built. We all thought he was barmy.²

Byrne, who wrote “Radio Head”, the Talking Heads song the band took their name from, talked with Yorke in Radiohead's offices in Oxford. It's not supposed to be a model for anything else. It was simply a response to a situation.² The band were out of contract, with their own studio and a new server, and had been through the whole music business first.

The band called release day “our leak date”. Each of their last four records had leaked, and so had Yorke's solo album, so this time they leaked it themselves. They mastered it, and two days later it was up on the site for preorder. There were no advance copies, to stop the race among reviewers to be first with a verdict that everyone else then copies.

The CD is out on 31 December in Britain through XL, and on 1 January in America through TBD Records and ATO. At first there was to be no ordinary CD at all, until Yorke changed his mind. A, that's asking for trouble, and B, it's snobbery.²

Radiohead now earn mainly from touring, which Yorke finds hard to square with the energy it uses. A study of the carbon footprint of their last tour found the worst of it was the audience driving to shows, especially in America. The plan is to play venues people can reach by public transport and to fly less equipment.

His first piece of advice to a new act is never to sign a big contract that takes away the digital rights and leaves an iTunes sale earning nothing. EMI paid Radiohead nothing for digital sales, because contracts of that era made no provision for them. In terms of digital income, we've made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever²