Radiohead and Pay-What You Want

Radiohead self-released In Rainbows online in a pay-what-you-want forum ("It's up to you" and "No really, it's up to you," says the shopping cart) for several reasons, and I'm not professing to know their order of importance:

-The band could afford the experiment (in terms of wealth already accumulated from adoring fans)
-The band could afford the experiment (in terms of knowing that adoring fans would still pay for the album)
-The band probably genuinely didn't care whether it could afford the experiment, anyway
-The band probably enjoyed being among trendsetters in releasing an album without the backing of a major label
-The band, or some trustworthy marketing resource employed by them, probably knew that the pricing mechanism would be a great promotional vehicle (and it has been)
-And, let's not underestimate, the band probably thought it was a nice thing to do for its fans.

At any rate, the experiment is going splendidly, with over 1.2M copies already legitimately downloaded, per Pollstar, at an average of $8 per Mashable (which points out that this is a bigger response, and far more profitable, than the band's last three albums combined) and by the way, it's a great album, although no The Bends.

Funny ignorant American currency sidenote: I used the currency calculator linked from their site to back into how many Euros I should pay to give them just about $10, and I settled on 7-something. But of course the shopping cart was in pounds, so I actually paid about $15.