The future of the music industry?

Radiohead has a new album coming out October 10th. It's their first album in a number of years and their first since they finished up a multi-album contract with EMI. They've decided not to sign with another record label and are releasing the new album online. While that in itself is a little different for a big band what is most compelling about this is how they are pricing their album. They've decided to let the purchaser decide how much they are willing to pay for the album! That's right, you go to radiohead.com and you can (pre)-order the album, you enter any price you want down to 1pence and then submit your order.

For someone like myself who hasn't purchased a lot of music in recent years this is very intriguing. Clearly Radiohead can do it more easily than some other bands since they are filthy rich already but by allowing the consumer to price the product as they want it makes the proposition of purchasing music for someone like myself much more viable. I can know decide myself how much I value the music and also ensure that the money is going to the band, not some big record label.

This probably isn't the first band to do this but as far as I know they are the biggest to try something like this. Is this the future of the music industry?