Talking to Rolling Stone, Thom Yorke confessed he understood why the band last album, ‘The King of Limbs’ did not make people very happy:
‘It was amazing just to put the record out like that. But then it didn't feel like it really existed… But that was the consequence of what we chose to do. You can either get upset about it, or say, well, that's not good enough.’
Radiohead released the LP last February without any publicity, announced like a week in advance, it was initially for download-only, and a CD followed a month later.
A manager of the band, Bryce Edge, said to Rolling Stone:
‘There were clearly people who were interested in the band's music, but they didn't know Radiohead had released a record’.
This, I can’t hardly understand, because if I am interested by a band, I will be aware of what they are doing, lots of publicity or not! But Thom declared:
‘I can see why it's alienated people. I didn't realize it was on its own planet.’
They said they sold 307,000 copies in the US, a low number for Radiohead, but the band was also proposing a direct download on their site and around 300,000 to 400,000 digital downloads were purchased that way.
Co-manager Chris Hufford said that ‘the majority of the sales were band-to-fan’ and that ‘Financially, it was probably the most successful record they've ever made, or pretty close. In a traditional deal, the record company takes the majority of the money.’
Let’s see, for their previous album, ‘In Rainbows’, they were asking for a pay-what-you-choose donation for the download and they sold 3 million copies, everything included, so how TKOL can be their most successful record?
In fact, half of the copies of ‘In Rainbows’ were downloaded for free, and the rest was downloaded for whatever people gave, whereas you had to pay around $9 to download ‘The King of Limbs’, which explains why Hufford said it was more financially successful.
But where is the solution? Radiohead obviously doesn’t want to get robbed by labels anymore but a release à la TKOL ‘alienates’ people even though it brings more money in the bank? What does it mean for their next album?