Indie Musician Beats Radiohead To The Punch

Liverpool, UK. (Top40 Charts/ Alun Parry Official Website) - Radiohead are rightly gaining praise for their "choose what you pay" policy - but indie musician Alun Parry was there before them.
For the Liverpool songwriter, and front man for The Alun Parry Band, launched the idea on his website several months ago.

Parry, a former Liverpool Busker of the Year, decided to apply the lessons from his days as a street busker to his musical career, and started giving his music away at a price of free or more - and called it Buskernomics.

He said, "When I was a busker I made my music freely available and bought my first guitar with the proceeds. So why not do the same now! I let people decide how much they want to pay, whether that be free or lots more. It's up to them."

Now Radiohead has done the exact same thing, offering their new album In Rainbows, released on October 10th, on much the same basis.

Parry said: "Since I pioneered Buskernomics, I've had many artists contact me and decide to adopt it themselves. But for a band as big as Radiohead to release their album in the same way is a major boost to the Buskernomics philosophy, and hopefully more musicians will go down the Buskernomics route now as a result."

Parry, whose music he describes as a cross between Woody Guthrie and The Clash, has also noticed that his band's website has been inundated with hits since Radiohead's announcement.

Parry says, "My site traffic has literally increased ten fold since the announcement. People are obviously inspired by the idea and have gone looking for others who work the same way."

Alun Parry plays with The Alun Parry Band and has just released his second album Liverpool 800, celebrating the people and city of Liverpool on its 800th Birthday.

Alun Parry has both albums (plus an additional bonus album) available to download via his website at www.parryband.co.uk