AKMA has a post noticing Radiohead’s new album, In Rainbows and its business model, for forty pounds sterling you can get a package with EVERYTHING:

…the new album, in
rainbows, on CD and on 2 x 12 inch heavyweight vinyl records.
A second, enhanced CD contains more new songs, along with digital photographs
and artwork.
The discbox also includes artwork and lyric booklets.
All are encased in a hardback book and slipcase.

But if all you want is the music, of the basic album, why download it and pay whatever you think is right. That's right, you fix the price.

Business Week had this to say:

Radiohead is trusting its fans to do the right thing, or something approximating the right thing.And I tend to think they will.File under "needless to say:" It's very hard to imagine an actual big-deal record label attempting anything like this.

Amy Phillips on Pitchfork wrote:

Haha, the entire record industry is so fucked!

AKMA expressed similar sentiments more verbosely but decorously:

You prosper in the digital environment by giving away what the internet
makes easy and by charging for what the internet doesn’t
facilitate (personal appearances, physical artifacts like packaging,
clothing, books, and so on). It’s that simple, but some
people and some corporate entities want to force the internet to
conform to the properties and characteristics of a pre-digital
environment. In the long run, they’ll be as successful as the
dinosaurs who commanded mammals to respond the the ice age by voluntary
mass extinction.

I am convinced they are right... But how do people (say biblical scholars) who do not get paid mega-bucks for personal appearances and the like pay for the other people's work needed for a successful publication. Our own work is either a hobby or we are paid for it as part of our job, but whatever format we choose except the casual blog, we need proofreaders, designers, film editors etc... to help make the "product"... how do we pay them?