Today, Radiohead released their much-anticipated seventh album, In Rainbows. As has been reported everywhere, they are selling it directly to listeners via web download and you, the purchaser, get to choose how much you pay for it (even if you want to pay nothing – I paid £5). What music label would allow such a thing? None. Radiohead doesn’t have a label. Prince, who’s also had his issues with record labels, took a similarly revolutionary path recently when he gave away for free millions of his latest CD in the UK and then proceeded to sell out 21 dates in London. Trent Reznor announced two days ago that Nine Inch Nails is free from a record label obligation and is looking for a “direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate”.

Apple and Amazon selling DRM-free music while huge acts like Radiohead, Prince, and Nine Inch Nails sell unencumbered tracks directly to the public? The Media Sphincter (that clenching muscle of media companies who continue to restrict media from being freely created and sold to audiences who crave more and more of it, even in the face of epic changes that will eventually remake their business model whether they like it or not) is beginning to fail. Watch out below.