Turn Up The Radiohead??

So by now you’ve probably heard about Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want strategy for their upcoming album release, and heard lots of noise about this being a daring new business model for the music industry. If not, click through this text for the basic story.

There is at least one big thing wrong with this scenario, however. Despite their circumventing the major labels this time around, their reputation and fan base has been built while they were a major label band–without that foundation they would have no fan base around to crash their server with demand for a new album.

So as a model, this one flops for all those unknown, unheralded bands out there wishing they could get as many hits on their website for a new CD release. Back to the grassroots drawing board, I suppose.