Radiohead's New Album, The King Of Limbs, Drops The ‘Pay-What-You-Want’ Gimmick

Ron & Fez just opened with the show a Radiohead song, and my first thought was, “Oh, man, did they break up?” Nope. Phew! But the band will release a new album, The King of Limbs, this Saturday. Exciting, sure. But wait, what’s this? It seems Radiohead has done away with the “pay-what-you-want” gimmick that generated so much heat for its previous album, 2007’s In Rainbows. What gives?

The album will be released with a number of different SKUs. (I suppose SKU would be the term to use here.) There will be an MP3 version ($9) and a WAV version ($14), both available this weekend. There doesn’t appear to be a FLAC version, which is truly mind-boggling to me. Why offer a WAV version but not a FLAC? Beats me.

There’s more. The band will also release the album as what it’s calling “the world’s first newspaper album.” It’ll come with an MP3 ($48) or WAV ($53) version of the album, along with two, 10-inch vinyls, a CD, and 625 pages of artwork. This newspaper album version will be released on May 9.

The only question now is, what will Pitchfork give it? I predict a 48 out of 10.