From Technology Review, January 7, 2008 – In October 2007, the English rock band Radiohead enhanced its already enviable avant-garde credibility by releasing its seventh album, In Rainbows, online. Fans willing to offer up their names and e-mail addresses–or at least, fake names and fake e-mail address–could pay what they chose for the album, even downloading it for free. The band, and the “tip jar” business model it had adopted, were the talk of the music press and the blogosphere for weeks.

While no one is quite certain how many albums were actually sold or how much money was actually made – the business model may tell us something about the future of the music business. For more, read Larry Hardesty’s article in TR.