M.G. Siegler, writing on Medium, about the release of Radiohead’s new album and the idea of “up-selling” to your die-hard fans:
But the Radiohead release points to another way forward. One I’m far more excited about as a fan. Distribute broadly, upsell deeply.
That is, put your album out there for all (or most) to hear, but then pull in your truly die-hard fans to buy exclusive content at a premium. That is a natural extension of what Radiohead did in 2007 with In Rainbows. You know, the “pay-what-you-want” album. The clever call out to a soon-to-be-dying model was even more ingenious in hindsight. Now this reality is here.