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Radiohead dumps digital distribution
Author: Gareth HalfacreePublished: 1st May 2008
Radiohead's famous digital giveaway of 'In Rainbows' is an experiment not to be repeated according to Thom Yorke.
In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter – now there's I link I didn't expect to be posting – the Radiohead frontman has declared the bands honesty-box inspired 'giveaway' of their last album, In Rainbows, a “one-off response to a particular situation.”
Yorke states that the experiment was “one of those things where we were in the position of everyone asking us what we were going to do. I don't think it would have the same significance now anyway, if we chose to give something away again.” In short, it looks like Radiohead's next album is going to be a very traditional release.
The band has been accused of using the giveaway as little more than a marketing gimmick before, with Nine Inch Nails drummer Trent Reznor stating he felt that “the way [Radiohead] parlayed it into a marketing gimmick has certainly been shrewd” and describing the project as “very much a bait and switch, to get you to pay for a MySpace-quality stream as a way to promote a very traditional record sale.” during an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in March.
While no-one could blame Radiohead for shying away from the 'give it away and hope people are generous enough to put food on your table' donation-ware system under which the digital version of In Rainbows was released – mostly due to the high levels of piracy they suffered as a result – many music fans are looking toward digital distribution in which the middle man, in the form of the music industry itself, is cut out and music is returned to its roots of a relationship between the performer and his fans as the future.
It's not just starry-eyed fans and hopeful technophiles who believe so too - Coldplay announced their entry into the 'give it away and hope for the best' digital distribution market on Monday with a gratis DRM-free download of their latest song Violet Hill. While it's not exactly a full album – or even the partial release as we saw with Nine Inch Nail's experiment – it does show that bands are increasingly willing to listen to what fans really want.
If given the choice, would you pay for a high-quality digital download or walk into a store and buy the CD? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Comments (16)
Anyway, I think more and more bands will be releasing material like this for a while at least.
(not sure why you said that he was the drummer though....)
you had so many options, from free, to good deals, to HOLY CRAP THAT IS ONE EXPENSIVE VERSION!!!!eleventyone!!!1
you could get what you wanted to pay for (i bought the 2 disk set + download, got it 2 weeks ago), and since is his own record label, it was less cost for us,and more profit for him.
good for him, great for us.
I happily, happily paid $5 for FLAC encoded music from NIN, and I would easily do so for other bands I like as well. I think we can all agree that true music fans would easily pay it as well. There will always be the pirates, but if all music were distributed this way piracy would be minimized because you give us almost no reason to get it for free when you could get it legal and high quality for cheap.
Right now you can buy a DRM infested CD because the RIAA thinks you will pirate it, so you are a thief if you download for free or buy a real copy. For most of us now have no problem just being an actual thief until the industry actually pulls their heads out of their collective ***es and listens to their customers. But I think now it is too late, people like Trent Reznor will become the final silver bullet to end the ancient CD business once and for all and give power back to the consumers.
Any songs I want I normally get on Vinyl.
that was sold out very fast.....
Surely that's a market that hasn't been used by the music industry for a couple of decades now? I don't know, I never go to music stores, but I also haven't ever even heard vinyl in RL. Just out of curiousity, why do you prefer it?
it's actually used all the time. Many DJ's still use them a lot ..and you can still find them in certain music stores last time I was in Newbury Comics.