Big Acts Follow Radiohead's Lead: Let Their Music Go Free

Rock group Radiohead has started a trend. Nine Inch Nails announced it will release its upcoming album online and ask fans to pay what they want for it ? instead of charging a set fee. Other major recording artists Oasis and Jamiroquai are also considering following Radiohead's lead.

These bands are stealing a page from Radiohead's playbook. Last week Radioahead announced it would be releasing its new album online, bypassing its label, and ask fans to set a price they wanted to pay. As of this morning Radiohead's album In Rainbows is available for download via the band's Website.

While there's no judging how successful Nine Inch Nails or Radiohead will be the trend has clearly begun.

Nine Inch Nails founder Trent Reznor said his group had dropped its label and become a free agent.

"I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different," Reznor wrote on the band's Website. "It gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate."

According to the UK's Daily Telegraph, fellow British groups Oasis and Jamiroquai are also considering issuing their music for free. Neither group is currently under a recording contract.

Jamiroquai front man Jason Kay for one has been plenty vocal about his distaste for the current industry standard. In a November interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, Kay vowed to put his next album online for "five f----ing dollars" after to conflicts with former label Sony Music, saying how the marketing outweighs the music.

Oasis is already planning to embrace digital music distribution, as it first-ever download-only single will be available from its Website on October 21. To start offering its music digitally at no cost could be a logical next step.

Could we be seeing the end of the current music business model? Industry experts told Time magazine what we are seeing is the wave of the future.

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