Which musical artists have recently decided to leave their labels and strike out on their own in light of Radiohead's bold moves ?

Tori Amos

Madonna--Live Nation
Eagles--Wal-Mart exclusive. Made a deal which I believe was a flat 30 million, pressed 3 million CDs and Wal-Mart got 'em, one-way.
Guess the Saul Williams thing is still digital-only 'til July 8. CD then.

oh! i didn't know the Saul Williams was going to CD at all, that's nice

jamiroquai

jay-z

Juliana Hatfield. Long before Radiohead.

Marillion, also long before Radiohead.

Einsturzende Neubauten, for the past 6 years.

simply red did this ages ago didn't they (and wasn't there some stories that the band were even in the process of re-recording all the classic albums so that they could release their own versions ?)

my life story to thread...

The Futureheads

Einsturzende Neubauten, for the past 6 years.

^^^^^^^

Journey, Bryan Adams, potentially AC/DC -- Wal-Mart exclusively. Have gone where the money is, where white-trash US shops for cheap physical goods. Good strategic move, has worked for all who chose it.

I'm only surprised more modern country artists haven't adopted the Wal-Mart only strategy.

Mint Condition is indie, although i guess they have some deal with Wal-Mart too.

Journey actually charted this week. They're kicking themselves over not doing the Wal-Mart thing sooner since their last album apparently only sold about 150 copies.

This would seem to make the Wal-Mart strategy direct anti-matter to the Radiohead ploy.

Michelle Shocked did it a while ago, too.

This would seem to make the Wal-Mart strategy direct anti-matter to the Radiohead ploy.

Not at all - both involve leaving long-time major labels for different marketing strategies. The Einsturzende and Hatfield models are not the same as the Radiohead model either, Reznor has done three different variations on it now - lots of people are trying lots of different things, and the Wal-Mart one is one of them that happens to be working for people.

Early entry: Les "Fru1tbat" Carter (of the By Then Stoppable Sex Machine) started selling EPs as shareware back in 1998: he'd put up mp3s of the songs for free downloading, if you liked 'em (or felt generally charitable) you could send him a couple of quid, and when he'd collected enough to press 500, he got a run printed and posted them out.
He modified the system later on to raise pressing costs for albums, where the first x number to pre-order the CD got a bonus CD-R of otherwise not-to-be-released songs and versions.

hush energy flash you're ruining that handy very scientific "wal mart ppl are dumb hicks!" theory

anyone waiting for juliana hatfield's music to get supremely bold and adventurous must have been sorely disappointed. i like her and all, but she was never working with limitless creative potential.

Hanson, iirc

The Beatles

^^ yeah, free Christmas 45s every year to their "subscriber base"!

another old-school direct-marketing wrinkle: Sub Pop Singles Club and similar

Paul McCartney, well, actually.

But expect nobody to follow Radiohead's exact example. I believe there were no more than 10 per cent or something out of the downloaders who chose to pay anything for their album at all. This was rectified a bit when a lot of those people went out and bought it on its first day in the shops, making it go #1 in spite of having been freely available for months.

Well, even leaving the purchase of the XL records version, they still earned more than they would have, more due to Radiohead's fans being the sort of people to atually pay for the stuff they get.

If it had been Babyshambles fans, they'd have earned exactly nowt.

Because RHead fans have more money, obv.