You must tell me: What did you pay for Radiohead?

When Radiohead announced to the media that their new album, "In Rainbows," would be available as a digital download to anyone on a "pay-what-you-want" basis, now that they're label-free from EMI, I nearly jumped out of my panties.

Finally, an artist-to-patron system to decide the market worth of music! Slobbering rich labels can kiss it... the future is artists who put faith in the fans and triumph! Music as art is redeemed!

Britney gets $2 dollars from skanks while Radiohead gets $20 from adoring fans who love their killer music and vibes. (Or $80 in this case if you order the deluxe vinyl/disk collection... looks pretty sweet.) That's music utopia. No more empty media campaigns blowing up a big-time flop (or five: Backstreet Boys, anyone?) for top-shelf because they fill the spots on E! or Cribs.

You, you intellectual and very hip cat of the digital age, can pay your price for music because it's good music. And pay more because it's really good music. Or not. Like a painting. The way it used to be. Why not? It's time. That would make sense.

So... the question all should now anticipate: What did you pay?

For any of you who know me, you know this is the unavoidable "philosophical" question of the modern moment. It is the perfect test of contemporary ethos: As the market 'force' deciding--you, yourself, for once--what you will pay, now that you've been asked, for goods received that have quality and worth and contribute regularly to what we know as "culture" and all around good-times, even though you've been spoiled like a rotten brat by a ten-year heyday of free music: ad valorum--What's Radiohead worth to you?

The new horizon is definitely complex. Arguments for where the money could and should generate (LPs, concerts) or not (because music should be for love, not money, yo) can ensue.

Despite your judgments or arguments or cheapness, it is--I think--a chance for all of us to allow the gesture to be more to us than it appears. Perhaps it's all Radiohead would ask.

ARTICLE: Win or lose, the revolution starts here.