Megan McArdle and Tyler Cowen each have interesting analyses of Radiohead's move to offer its new album for Whatever Price You Feel Like Paying.

As economists, they're most taken with the nuts and bolts of how the scheme will work as a retail transaction, and how it may directly benefit (or harm) the band. Potentially more explosive, though, is what it means for the industry. It seems that Radiohead, in one swoop, has solved the piracy problem, for starters. As Stereogum puts it:

Looks like "In Rainbows" will be the great equalizer: no advance copies, so probably no leaks -- just a world full of Radioheadheads pressing play on the same day. Meanwhile, another press mailing this morning mentioned "Radiohead are planning a traditional CD release of In Rainbows for early 2008." So, really, we've got a band-sanctioned album leak complete with tip jar, a deluxe package, and the eventual record-store release of the album. It's a nice way of challenging the traditional model, of embracing the way people get their music, and of framing a host of new issues and alternatives for industry wonks to debate and consider for a long time to come.

I had always thought Pearl Jam would be the first to one to go -- to leave the majors and turn guerrilla. But they waited too long. If they pulled a Radiohead now, no one would really care. In the meantime, I've gone through the motions of preordering the new album, but I'm xenophobically paranoid about paying in pounds-and-pence.

I'm not sure if the producers over at "60 Minutes" timed it deliberately, but right after Bruce Springsteen said last night that, despite his apathy as a student, it's quite possible he was the smartest person in his class, he let out a rather amusing solecism: "immersement."

Could we be having another Fred Durst moment here?

From Henry James' "The Portrait of a Lady" (1881): "He never speaks of his painting -- to people at large; he is too clever for that. But he has a little girl -- a dear little girl; he does speak of her. He is devoted to her, and if it were a career to be an excellent father he would be very distinguished. But I am afraid that is no better than the snuff-boxes; perhaps not even so good."

From a 1980 Pauline Kael essay in the New Yorker: "Trying to say something big, Coppola got tied up in a big knot of American self-hatred and guilt, and what the picture ["Apocalypse Now"] boiled down to was: White man -- he devil. Since then, I think, people have expected less of movies and have been willing to settle for less. Some have even been willing to settle for 'Kramer vs. Kramer' and other pictures that seem to be made for an audience of over-age flower children. These pictures express the belief that if a man cares about anything besides being at home with the kids, he's corrupt. Parenting ennobles Dustin Hoffman and makes him a better person in every way, while in 'The Seduction of Joe Tynan' we can see that Alan Alda is a weak, corruptible fellow because he wants to be president of the United States more than he wants to stay at home communing with his daughter about her adolescent miseries. Pictures like these should all end with the fathers and the children sitting at home watching TV together."

Hmmm. Two cheers for ambition then?

Bruce and Co., with Win and Regine Butler, doing Springsteen's "State Trooper" and Arcade Fire's own "Keep the Car Running" in Ottawa, Ontario, last night.

My mind is officially blown.

P.S.: Here's Foo Fighters doing the latter tune earlier this year. Song of the year?

FOX News' Roger Friedman, bless him, is shaking his fists at Big Radio for not playing new music by his favorite boomer artists. A couple of years ago, they weren't playing the Stones. Now they're stiffing Springsteen.

Writes Friedman:

Radio will not play "Magic." In fact, sources tell me that Clear Channel has sent an edict to its classic rock stations not to play tracks from "Magic." But it's OK to play old Springsteen tracks such as "Dancing in the Dark," "Born to Run" and "Born in the USA."

Just no new songs by Springsteen, even though it's likely many radio listeners already own the album and would like to hear it mixed in with the junk offered on radio.

I hate to say it, but this is nonsense. When "The Rising" came out, its title track was played on classic rock stations, at least locally. To my knowledge, it gained no traction. Bruce's people tried to shake a tree by moving "Lonesome Day" to country stations and Country Music Television. Why not? It had a fiddle!

Much the same indifference would greet "Magic." For a variety of reasons — audioblogs, iPods, music on TV, the general fragmentation of media culture — radio just isn't important to many people anymore. It's background noise at best. Just think about Friedman's contention that those who've bought "Magic" would like to hear it played on the radio in today's environment of hyperportability: "Magic" owners can plug all 12 of its tracks directly into their ears, wherever they are, at any time of day. Who needs radio?

To digress slightly, I notice WTGB-FM (94.1, aka "the Globe") is losing listeners despite doing what radio bemoaners say it should be doing: broadening its playlist. It plays the likes of Wilco, Feist and the John Butler Trio.

Yet the city shrugs. It might have something to do with the white cords dangling from everybody's ears.