Monday, October 01, 2007

radiohead in rainbows

[Update: my liveblogging review of the album is here]

I realise that everyone is talking about this already, so the adding of my tuppence really adds very little value to this here internet - nevertheless, I think it's very interesting that Radiohead (perhaps typically) have decided to sidestep convention and release their brand new album, with very little fuss, on their own website, without any record company back up - and rather charmingly are not even dictating how much people have to pay to get it. You can have it for free, in other words, or you can work out how much you'd like to pay and pay just that. Great stuff.

Annoyingly, I don't like Radiohead that much, so I can't really join in the fun. But I hope the scheme is successful and that it sets some sort of precedent. It's a very brave move for a band as big as Radiohead and it's impossible not to respect them for it.

Ironically, thinking about it, my favourite thing about the band is ordinarily their wonderful artwork, so if I were to show an interest, it'd probably manifest itself in buying the diskbox - a beautiful, expensive package comprising heavyweight vinyl, CD and MP3 - lovingly rendered and about a thousand times more interesting than a bunch of MP3s. Still, fascinating stuff.

Here's some more via BoingBoing.

3 comments:

Powerful Pierre said...

Well, I've very excited about it and have ordered my discbox. It is great that they have surprised everyone and done their own thing. Just hope there's some gigs too.

Homage said...

The free thing is good because it is definitely better than selling albums today and being behind in sales. Now we can have websites debut albums and pay the costs of the recording process and in return get a million hits in a day. It really could be great. Plus, there is no decrease in quality. The album is great. There’s a great review in www.imposemagazine.com on the whole thing. It is good for the record industry and the band and esp. the fans.

Anonymous said...

I´m really excited about the new release of Radiohead and would recommend it to anyone who loved the band before.

The concept of selling music without a fixed price may somehow appear risky, but will turn out right. The majority of people would prefer buying music legally at a low price rather than downloading a pirate copy.

I admit only having paid 1 EUR for "In Rainbows" as I had no great expectations. Now as I love this album much, I would have spend probably more.