• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, October 1, 2007

The disruption to the music industry that started with the original Napster continued this week, as Radiohead announced it would make its new album available online at whatever price consumers wished to pay.

Much like the policy at the New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, consumers can donate as much or as little as they like for the new album, "In Rainbows," slated for release Oct. 10.

The announcement, made on its Web site, has shaken the embattled record industry. "Radiohead is the best band in the world; if you can pay whatever you want for music by the best band in the world, why would you pay $13 dollars or $.99 cents for music by somebody less talented? Once you open that door and start giving music away legally, I'm not sure there's any going back," one producer told Time magazine.

Pay-what-you-wish is certainly an intriguing idea -- one that reflects many artists' own conflict between wanting the listening public to hear their work and needing to earn enough money to continue making music for a living.

Even if it turns out that consumers aren't willing to pony up cash for the downloads, Radiohead has other alternatives. There's no reason why it couldn't, for instance, subsidize the downloads with ads on its site.

At the same time, few groups are Radiohead -- which has no contractual obligation to release its records through a studio. This means that the record labels have time to watch Radiohead's initiative and decide on their own whether something similar could work for other musicians.