NIN, Oasis Make Like Radiohead

10/09/2007 8:05 AM, E! Online
Josh Grossberg

Radiohead is apparently onto something big.

Just days after the British art rockers announced plans to independently release their seventh studio album, In Rainbows, online with fans picking their own price, several other high-profile acts, including Nine Inch Nails, Oasis and Jamiroquai, are looking to get in on the action.

NIN's maverick mastermind Trent Reznor wrote on his band's site Monday that he and NIN are "free agents" after fulfilling the terms of their deal with Interscope and are exploring new distribution options.

"I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate," he writes.

"Look for some announcements in the near future regarding 2008. Exciting times, indeed."

Reznor has long signaled his dissatisfaction with the music biz and has advocated more fan-friendly tactics.

Back in May shortly after Nine Inch Nails' Year Zero hit stores, Reznor told Australia's Herald Sun that label execs were "thieves," noting the $30 price tag for the disc Down Under.

Admitting to illegally downloading songs via peer-to-peer networks, Reznor encouraged NIN's avid fanbase to do the same with Year Zero if they felt it were too expensive.

"If I could do what I want right now, I would put out my next album, you could download it from my site at as high a bit-rate as you want, pay $4 through PayPal," he said at the time. Reznor couldn't do that for Year Zero, but he did stream the disc online for free and made available the instrumental tracks for fans to remix and share.

Meanwhile, according to London's Daily Telegraph, Radiohead's countrymen in Oasis and Jamiroquai are also considering a new gameplan.

Oasis, which currently does not have a label deal, will issue its first digital-only single, "Lord Don't Slow Me Down," on Oct. 21. The track and a video featuring two live cuts—"The Meaning of Soul" and "Don't Look Back in Anger"—are currently available for preorder on oasis.net.

As for Jamiroquai, England's premiere dance-funk troupe finished up an eight-album commitment with Sony Music last year following the release of Dynamite and a greatest-hits compilation and is currently on break.

But frontman Jay Kaye has hinted that the group may soon strike out on its own. He told the Sydney Morning Herald in a 2006 sit-down that "these days it's 18 percent music and it's bloody 82 percent marketing bulls---," noting that his band's High Times: Singles 1992-1996 was only issued out of contractual obligation to Sony to end Jamiroquai's deal.

"Next time I do an album," he added, "I'm going to put it up on the Internet for five f---ing dollars."

Radiohead's gambit to buck the traditional model seems to be paying off. Aside from all the publicity, the  Internet monitoring agency HitWise reports that traffic for Radiohead's Website saw an 11-fold increase in the U.K. following the In Rainbows announcement. Lead guitarist Jonny Greenwood posted a message on the band's blog the next day asking people to be patient because the site was overwhelmed with orders.

A cursory look at music blogs and news sites suggests that most fans are paying for the download, typically in the $5 to $10 range.

Radiohead's reps have said that many more are ordering the deluxe $80 box set that doesn't ship until December. Fans who opt for the set—which includes both vinyl and CD versions of In Rainbows along with a bonus disc of eight new songs, lyric book and artwork—automatically get the digital version once it goes online Wednesday.

Still, Radiohead might not be done with record stores and labels altogether. The band is currently in talks with various labels for a more traditional retail release sometime in January, a rep says.