Dave Fanning: Guys, first things first, the "In Rainbows" album, right? What was the most difficult part of doing it yourself, the DIY aspect of it?

Ed: Getting the wording right on the website was quite tricky.

Thom: Yes.

Ed: I know that might sound a bit superficial, but actually how to get it across to people that this was a, you know, you are making a donation. We are asking…how you word it without sounding pompous or irrelevant or… Irreverent, rather.

Thom: Or irrelevant.

Ed: Or irrelevant. That was pretty tricky.

Dave: And you had no real idea of the consequences at all. You had no idea how this was gonna work out, because it was a brand new model, if you think about it. People hadn't really done that before, certainly not on your level. So, it was an exciting thing to do, just throw it out there and see what happens.

Thom: Oh it was exciting. There were a few meetings, you know sitting down. [We had] just finished doing the record, had it in a box, wanted to put it up, free of all the mechanics, all the drudgery of the whole thing. We had not basically talked to anybody, hadn't done any interviews, any explanation, nothing. So basically nobody knew outside the camp. And, yeah, it was one of the most exciting things we have ever done, I think, actually.

Dave: Yeah, of course, one of the most exciting things any band has ever done, but is it fair to say that you had finished the album, it was recorded, ready to go, you possibly would've released it through EMI or whatever, 'til your managers came up with the idea maybe more than you did and then you went: "Yeah, that's pretty good, let's try it."?

Ed: We hadn't resigned with EMI, we had a dialogue going about what kind of a record we're making, how are we gonna release it, you know, where is it applicable. And then in about April of last year, they came and said, "Listen, we've got this idea" and…

Thom: But, you know, a lot of it was from the leaking thing.

Ed: Yeah.

Dave: Right, previous albums of yours had been leaked onto the Internet.

Thom: Everything, even my record. Everything had been leaked. And part of that was down to the mass-production element of things. Because by the time it gets to the vinyl plant or… It doesn't matter what you do, cause some buggers gonna put it up on the Net and think they're really clever. And so the idea was that nobody gets it pre, at all, as an experiment.

Ed: And, you know, when you finish a record, you've got this 3-month leak-time, where everything, all the parts have to get in place. And it is so frustrating. You finish this record and you want people to hear it and then it's this quarter of the year, could be half a year, almost.

Thom: And also, the other thing that really gets my goat is, because of the nature of the journalists don't get paid anymore, the budgets are cut and magazines are selling [poorly]. What happens is you have the first two or three reviews come out and whoever wrote them first and then they get cut and pasted and repeated and repeated and repeated. And that winds me up, something chronic, so it was a good way of sort of saying everybody gets to make up their mind at once.

Dave: And when it came out, you had a good 8 or 10 weeks for people to do whatever it is they wanted to do to get the album. But then it came out in physical form. It did go, in the physical form, to number 1 in the US and the UK. Was there any element of thinking beforehand "Gosh, how's this gonna work out?" or was there an element of "Now there's a result!".

[all laugh]

Ed: It was, it was really bizarre

Thom: It was bonkers!

Ed: We could not believe it.

Thom: I kept ringing everybody up going … Because there was some huge release in the US, that week. Whoever their manager was went ballistic when he'd found out we'd beaten them.

Ed: Clive Davis.

Dave: No, but he went ballistic when he found out that an album that had been available for free for 10 weeks-

Ed: He demanded a re-count!

Dave: Did he?

Ed: Yeah, he demanded a re-count!

Thom: Truly political, truly democratic.

Ed: It was amazing.

Dave: But, you see, he demanded a re-count, someone who'd been in the business for 400 years and who's been at the very top for those 400 years. Do you think the industry he's been at the top of for those 400 years is more or less collapsing and…

Thom: It has only kept itself going for the last 10 years by repackaging everything it already and selling it for 15 quid!

Ed: And we had been talking about this, what we were doing compared to the industry. The industry has become all about money, it's maximising income, that's why the love the old economic model cause they sold loads of CDs, everybody's happy. The great thing about this was, and the reason why people have sort of slagged us off in the industry, they don't like it because this wasn't about the money. This was about the spirit of thing and that's why it was so exciting, it was about the spirit of thing. And, obviously, we were hoping to make money out of it, but it's not about being greedy. And it's getting that the whole thing about what's exciting about music is the spirit.

Thom: There's other elements, too. There was a unique position to be in at the time