The band announced that its new album, King of Limbs, will be available for download February 19, on its website this morning. Described as the "Newspaper Album," King of Limbs comes in the form of two 10-inch vinyl records in a "purpose-built record-sleeve," a CD and "many large sheets of artwork, 625 tiny pieces of artwork and a full-colour piece of oxo-degredeable plastic to hold it all together." The price for the hard copy: $48 when sold with an MP3 download of the album, and $53 when sold with the WAV download. The discs and vinyls will ship May 9, while the digital downloads will be available February 19. Customers also have an option to purchase the album in download-only form.
The move comes after Radiohead challenged music industry pricing with its October 2007 release of In Rainbows. While a "discbox" version of the album was sold for an established price, the group initially offered the album for download on its website for free, giving fans the option of paying whatever they wanted for the music. The group initially netted an average of $8 per album sold. Two months later, the album became available on iTunes for $9.99.