Trivia / In Rainbows

• Better Export for You: A Japan-exclusive 2008 reissue includes a bonus DVD featuring the Concert Film From the Basement.
• Channel Hop: With this album, Radiohead jumped from Parlophone Records (in the UK) and Capitol Records (in the US) in favor of XL Recordings, as Hail to the Thief was the band's final album in their six-album contract with EMI. The decision to go to a small-name independent label instead of a major one was due to the band having grown averse towards major label culture, and indeed Thom Yorke would go on to become a public critic of major record labels.
• Colbert Bump: Having one of the biggest acts of the late '90s and early 2000s suddenly signed onto them brought a lot of newfound attention to XL Recordings once this album's physical release dropped.
• Creator Backlash: A minor one, but Thom Yorke had expressed doubts on how effective the famous "pay-what-you-want" approach for the album turned out in the end. The intent behind the experiment was largely rooted in trying to subvert the corporate music industry — at the time, CD sales were failing in large part due to increasing piracy, and that this form of release was made to play into that understanding while connecting with an audience that still wanted to hear their music — but Yorke believes that their execution may have unintentionally been playing into the hands of bigger content moguls, increasing the level of commodification of music while simultaneously making it worth less. This is likely why the band opted out of the pay-what-you-want model since then, returning to more traditional releases for future projects.
• Feelies: The initial CD release of the album was in the form of a pressboard envelope containing a DIY CD case kit featuring the disc, liner notes, a series of stickers, and an instructions sheet. According to the instructions, the idea is that buyers would peel of the stickers and stick them either on the front, back, and sides of a blank jewel case or on both the liner notes and a blank U-card insert that'd then be inserted into a blank jewel case. Later re-pressings forgo this unorthodox style of packaging and instead use a traditional digipak or digisleeve.
• Invisible Advertising: The album was announced only ten days before its release, far shorter than was the norm for popular musicians at the time and too short to provide any conventional advertising in advance. The band cited the growing online landscape and the threat of content leaks as a factor, and the move's success is widely credited with inventing the "surprise album" as a release model (even if it wasn't a true Surprise Release in the modern sense of the term).
• The Merch: There were several shirts made of lyrics from In Rainbows songs: "you used to be alright — what happened?" ("15 Step"), "you'll go to hell for what your dirty mind is thinking" ("Nude"), "blink your eyes — once for yes, two for no" ("Bodysnatchers"), "I am trapped inside this body and can't get out" ("Bodysnatchers"), "no matter how it ends, no matter how it starts" ("House of Cards"), "this is one for the good days" ("Videotape"), and the regular layout of the album title and band name that was on the album cover proper.
• Surprise Release: In Rainbows is often credited as the Trope Maker where music albums are concerned, being not only announced a mere ten days before release, but also being released with a very unexpected new "pay-what-you-want" system. The band did this as an experiment for a variety of reasons, including dissatisfaction with traditional release and promotion formats, and curiosity with the ever-increasing popularity of the internet and its potential as a tool for discovering music. The smash success and publicity surrounding this move ended up inspiring much bigger acts like Beyoncé and U2 to pull off similar stunts for their own artistic and business-related reasons.
• Working Title: "Nude" was originally demoed and performed under the titles "Failure to Receive Repayment Will Put Your House at Risk", "Big Ideas", and "(Don't Get Any) Big Ideas"; the final name was snagged from an early version of the chorus, which featured the line "what do you look like when you're nude?"

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