Radiohead

[rhyae]

new album in a few days, you can only DL it from their site, and you name your own price.
wicked.

[Leonaerd]

Ooooh can't wait.

[Fairweather Pure]

I didn't know this. Very cool.

[masteen]

They're also selling some kind of uber collector pack with the album on CD, vinyl, tracks that didn't make it, ect. for their hardcore fans and shit.

Radiohead gets it. Give the music away, and maybe get a few more thousand people to show up when they tour. Assuming the music is good, this is a great idea. Not so good if you produce the absolute trash that most popular music is, but, frankly, fuck the music industry and Brittney.

[Vaemas]

Wish I could find the article I read yesterday on this. Had some really cool quotes and such in it. Also pointed out Prince's disc give away in the UK followed by him selling out all 26 consecutive shows he had scheduled following the album release.

Crazy.

Also, current news seems to be that Radiohead's site got slammed (really? no shit!) and that quite a number of folks are preordering the discbox due out in December. Quotes are also saying that most fans are volunteering "retail" price for the downloads with very few folks going super cheap.

Hard to say if this model could be made to work for new and emerging artists, but nice to see a huge name take matters into their own hands and (probably) get rewarded for giving consumers the ultimate say.

[Leonaerd]

Hard to say if this model could be made to work for new and emerging artists, but nice to see a huge name take matters into their own hands and (probably) get rewarded for giving consumers the ultimate say.

Agreed. And I'm glad such a superb band was the first to do this. Might mark a new page in music history (hopefully)!

[Vaemas]

Found the article at Time.com. http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0 ... 73,00.html

[Abelard]

Fucking right on.

I stopped following RH after hail to the thief, but The Bends is still one of my favorite albums to date.

[Nick]

You haven't missed anything then except Thom Yorke's fantastic solo album.

Also, random Radiohead trivia = If you enable "multiple instancing" in Winamp and line up 2 individual windows of Kid A, with one 17 seconds ahead/behind the other, the resulting noise is fucking incredible.

To the point where this has to have been deliberate. (Not like a crappy stoner OMG Put DARK SIDE OF THE MOON ON while teh Wizrad of OZ is playing and have your mindbLOWN).

It's like listening to a really classy remix of Kid A.

Must have been deliberate.


*also, new album ordered.

[Nick]

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/ ... ck_preview

[Keverian FireCry]

As always with Radiohead it only gets better with time, but my first impressions of In Rainbows is really good. Right now I'd say it's up there with The Bends, OK Computer, and Kid A.

How do you all feel about the album/tracks so far? I paid $20 for the download and I'm already thinking I should've spent the ~$80 on the disc box.

[Sueven]

This is such a brilliant move.

I imagine that, with a distribution system like this, there are far fewer middlemen costs that Radiohead has to account for, meaning that they probably receive a far greater % of each dollar spent than they would with traditional distribution. I might be wrong, but I'm betting that paying them $5 to download the album for free makes them much more money than paying $20 to buy the album in a store would.

I downloaded the album from their site, and paid them a decent amount for it. I would not have bought the album in a store if they had gone that route. I don't want this to spark an ethics discussion, but my music-acquiring habits are generally to steal studio music, and, if I really like the music, I'll buy a ticket to go see it in concert (which I think is a decent way to accommodate my desire to listen to music, support artists I like, and oppose what I view as an incredibly corrupt and evil industry). I would have done the same thing with this album. Instead, I paid for it, and I'd be happy to do the same for any other band who put out an album in this fashion.

Clearly, this route is best followed by well-established bands who are financially independent and have a built-in fan base. However, long term, this sort of strategy could spark a rethinking of traditional music industry distribution models. The current record-label dominated music business paradigm is clearly flawed, archaic, and on the way out. The big question is whether the record labels will realize this and adjust, or whether they'll continue futilely battling to maintain their business model while a new, organic model develops underneath their feet. Radiohead's actions here are another step toward the development of that grassroots business model. I'm very interested to see what the music industry looks like in 15 years.

[Tyek]

How the hell do you pay them now? I could not figure out where on the site it was. I found the old site thing in the Direktion part, but you could not click anything.

[Spang]

Purchase a digital download of their latest album.

[Xatrei]

http://www.inrainbows.com

Dunno why the link isn't on their normal page. One might think that fans would go there to buy the album or something...

[Nick]

Weird Fishes
Faust
Jigsaw falling into place


Brilliant songs.

As with Hail to the thief, there is a somewhat tragic amount of filler in the album, but as with Hail to the thief, there are a couple of nuggets of awesomeness.

This album looks more like it should be a live album. Which all the best ones are I suppose I really liked it anyway

[Gzette]

i paid 5 pounds for it. that's probably a lot more than they would have gotten out of me through a retail cd buy. btw i have no idea how much that really is in american dollars. like $100 i bet

they're smart

[Aardor]

It's like $10.20. My credit card called me because they thought it was a fraudulent charge. Amazing album.

[Markulas]

Brilliant album!!!

They're going to release In Rainbows with a traditional record company in January 2008. If their site is still up I'm going to pay for there again.

[miir]

Most paid 'nothing'...

Nearly two-thirds of downloaders paid nothing for Radiohead's latest album

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7082627.stm

[Fash]

makes it even more like every other album that is released, they just don't get such detailed statistics for those.

i'd like to see what radiohead thinks about it, about how much money they made, etc, and if they'd do it again.

if radiohead is happy with their take, it doesn't matter how many people got it for free.

(i haven't so much as listened to this album, or heard a song anywhere)

[Spang]

American fans were the most generous, paying on average $8.05 (£3.85), compared with the $4.64 (£2.22) paid by those outside the US.