Radiohead: new material appears on-line

Jun 18, 2007

A selection of new Radiohead songs have appeared online.

The band who are currently working on their seventh album, have not released any new material since 2003's 'Hail To The Thief'.

The tracks have surfaced on YouTube under the description: "...bits of tape which have been chopped out of the mixes when they were edited..."

The tracks that appear in the clip, which is over a minute long, are 'Open Pick', '? (New Song?, I Froze Up?, Burn The Witch?)', 'All I Need', 'Down Is The New Up', 'Arpeggi' and 'Bangers N' Mash'.

The guitarist Ed O'Brien recently posted on Radiohead.com: "Yes I know its been a while...but we've been working on this album for a while...BUT WE ARE NEARLY THERE..."

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lAOXr10joo[/youtube]

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Edited to update ~ the general release version of the [lilred]In Rainbows[/lilred] album will be available domestically in the USA on January 1, 2008:



CD Album:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000YXMMAE/?tag=imwan-20

MP3 Album:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0011TQLA2/?tag=imwan-20

thanks for sharing this, they're my all time heroes, i've seen them 27 times live now & met my missus at their victoria park gig, so this is vewy exciting! (btw: any one who is a 'mighty head' fan, visit ateaseweb.com, the first messageboard i ever joined & one of ze best websites ever!)

oh, & on the radiohead front, my favourite album ever was 10 years old on sunday:
http://www.a-reminder.org/music/?cat=10

From Billboard

http://billboard.com/bbcom/news/article ... 1003648727

Radiohead Countdown Site Revealed As Hoax
Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.

Earlier this week, the Web site RadioheadLP7.com began a countdown to an apparent announcement tomorrow morning (Sept. 29), sending fans into a tizzy. Most assumed the site would reveal details about Radiohead's new album, which is due next year.

However, the band's publicist tells Billboard.com the site is a hoax and that there is no plan to reveal any Radiohead news tomorrow.

RadioheadLP7.com launched amid a string of coded messages on the band's official Web site, which have featured snippets of new song lyrics and such phrases as "considering dissemination."

That is an apparent allusion to the fact that Radiohead is presently without a record deal, although reports suggest the band is in negotiations with a variety of companies to distribute the new album.

Although that appeared to be a hoax, this might be the real thing.
It's called In Rainbows, and unfortunately appears to be digital only at this point, unless http://www.radiohead.com has been hacked or if this isn't the official Radiohead site

40 British Pound Sterling for the CD version? Thats $82.00 American Dollars.It has to be a joke!

from Reuters--

Radiohead tells fans to pay what they want for album

By Kate Holton
Mon Oct 1, 12:24 PM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - Radiohead, one of the world's most influential rock bands, plans to sell its new album from its Web site as a digital download and let fans choose what they want to pay.

With music sales in decline globally for seven successive years, the industry is engaged in a debate over how best to reverse the trend.

Radiohead said its seventh studio album "In Rainbows" would be available from Radiohead.com from October 10 in MP3 format, meaning it can be played on all digital devices. In the latest twist in the move to digital music, fans can choose how much to pay, or can pay nothing if they prefer.

The band will also offer a special edition boxed set for 40 pounds ($82) which will be available later and will include two vinyl albums, a CD version of the new album and a second CD with additional new songs, artwork and photographs of the band.

Music observers said the British five-piece, which is no longer signed to a record label, is able to sell directly to its fans because it has such an established support base.

"They are the first band to put their money where their mouth is," Gareth Grundy, deputy editor of Q music magazine, told Reuters. "I think other bands that have been similarly successful will look and, if it is deemed to have worked, will do the same."

The traditional music business model has been under pressure as piracy and the move to digital sales has cut into album revenues. A strong area of growth, however, is live music and any subsequent tour by Radiohead would be boosted by the interest generated by the album.

"The traditional business model had been ruined by the Internet," said Grundy. "The industry is still trying to work out what on earth the new model or models should be and this is just one option."

Radiohead's digital or boxed set versions could be pre-ordered from the group's Web site from Monday and a spokesman said the box set had so far proved the more popular.

The group is planning a traditional CD release of the album in early 2008.

A decision by U.S. music star artist Prince to give his latest album away free with a British newspaper was met with fury by retailers and the industry who said it undermined the value of recorded music.

from Time.com--

Radiohead Says: Pay What You Want

By JOSH TYRANGIEL
Monday, Oct. 01, 2007


Thom Yorke performs with Radiohead at the Carling Apollo Hammersmith in London, England.
Jo Hale / Getty Images

Roughly 12,000 albums are released in an average year, so the announcement late Sunday night that the new Radiohead record, In Rainbows, will be out Oct. 10 is not itself big news. Sure, Radiohead is on a sustained run as the most interesting and innovative band in rock, but what makes In Rainbows important — easily the most important release in the recent history of the music business — are its record label and its retail price: there is none, and there is none.

In Rainbows will be released as a digital download available only via the band's web site, Radiohead.com. There's no label or distribution partner to cut into the band's profits — but then there may not be any profits. Drop In Rainbows' 15 songs into the online checkout basket and a question mark pops up where the price would normally be. Click it, and the prompt "It's Up To You" appears. Click again and it refreshes with the words "It's Really Up To You" — and really, it is. It's the first major album whose price is determined by what individual consumers want to pay for it. And it's perfectly acceptable to pay nothing at all.

Radiohead's contract with EMI/Capitol expired after its last record, Hail to the Thief, was released in 2003; shortly before the band started writing new songs, singer Thom Yorke told TIME, "I like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one. And, yes, it probably would give us some perverse pleasure to say 'F___ you' to this decaying business model." On Sunday night, guitarist Jonny Greenwood took to Radiohead's Dead Air Space blog and nonchalantly announced, "Hello everyone. Well, the new album is finished, and it's coming out in 10 days. We've called it In Rainbows. Love from us all."

While many industry observers speculated that Radiohead might go off-label for its seventh album, it was presumed the band would at least rely on Apple's iTunes or United Kingdom-based online music store 7digital for distribution. Few suspected the band members had the ambition (or the server capacity) to put an album out on their own. The final decision was apparently made just a few weeks ago, and, when informed of the news on Sunday, several record executives admitted that, despite the rumors, they were stunned. "This feels like yet another death knell," emailed an A&R executive at a major European label. "If the best band in the world doesn't want a part of us, I'm not sure what's left for this business."

Labels can still be influential and profitable by focusing on younger acts that need their muscle to get radio play and placement in record stores — but only if the music itself remains a saleable commodity. "That's the interesting part of all this," says a producer who works primarily with American rap artists. "Radiohead is the best band in the world; if you can pay whatever you want for music by the best band in the world, why would you pay $13 dollars or $.99 cents for music by somebody less talented? Once you open that door and start giving music away legally, I'm not sure there's any going back."

The ramifications of Radiohead's pay-what-you-want experiment will take time to sort out, but for established artists at least, turning what was once their highest-value asset — a much-buzzed-about new album — into a loss leader may be the wave of the future. Even under the most lucrative record deals, the ones reserved for repeat, multi-platinum superstars, the artists can end up with less than 30% of overall sales revenue (which often is then split among several band members). Meanwhile, as record sales decline, the concert business is booming. In July, Prince gave away his album Planet Earth for free in the U.K. through the downmarket Mail on Sunday newspaper. At first he was ridiculed. Then he announced 21 consecutive London concert dates — and sold out every one of them.

from RollingStone.com--


Radiohead's "In Rainbows": Track-By-Track Preview

Posted Oct 01, 2007 1:59 PM


As you've no doubt heard by now, Radiohead are releasing In Rainbows, their seventh studio album, in two different formats: a basic DRM-free download version that costs whatever you want that's available October 10th, and a deluxe boxed version that includes a double vinyl disc, a book, eight bonus tracks and two CDs, out the first week of December (it also comes with a DRM-free download that actives on October 10th).
The good news for those of you who can't wait: As any hard-core Radiohead fan knows, most of the songs on In Rainbows have been played live by the band for some time, and versions of them are widely available on the Internet. Here's a track-by-track breakdown of Radiohead's new album.

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

Since when they did become the "best band in the world"? I think they're OK, but they're also pretentious and at times unlistenable. Defintely a band I don't get in terms of popularity and critcal praise.
This is certainly an interesting gamble, but they have a diehard following and can probably get away with it-especially with the 2CD version due out in stores or online early next year.
I do love their contempt for the music industry, but as a CD buyer, I think this just more bad news for this doomed industry.

"Best Band in the World" is always subject to debate, but the point is still valid... if a band like Radiohead, who is, in fact, regarded by many people as one of the best, if not the best, band in the world, and you can buy their music for free... why on earth would you want to pay for, say, the new Britney Spears single?

To extend the point though... if recorded music really is turning into a loss leader and if live performances continue to account for a much higher percentage of an artist's income: 1) what's going to happen to ticket prices, and 2) what's going to happen to pop artists who are mainly studio creations? Guess there's always ringtones...

So who downloaded it? I won't be able to grab it until I get home from work.

I did. It was delivered to my inbox at 10pm pacific, and I downloaded it at Midnight when I got home. Listening to it right now. I paid 3 pounds 50p for mine.

Death to the current record company model, which has only done harm to music in the last ten years. I'm thrilled. And before I'm flamed here for supporting digital music at only 160kbm bitrate, remember-- it's basically the band leaking its own record. The CD is coming-- even a vinyl version. It sounds GREAT on my ipod in my car, and I didn't have to fork over money to a stupid comglomerate that hates its own product and fans to get it.

I've felt as if the major record companies hate (HATE) their consumers for years now-- I love being able to snub them like I did today. Feels good.

Bravo, Radiohead.
Jeff

Reaction floods in to new Radiohead disc

10/10/2007 4:49 PM, AP
Jake Coyle

Back in the day, fans would have congregated at midnight at their local music stores to get first crack at a new Radiohead album.

How old-fashioned.

Instead, the release of Radiohead's seventh studio album, "In Rainbows," was received Wednesday with online hysteria from fans, the blogosphere and music Web sites. It was Radiohead Day in the virtual world.

There had been no advance reviews for "In Rainbows" because it was only ten days before Wednesday that the British quintet announced the imminent release of their latest opus.

Sending shock waves through a downtrodden music industry, the band said they would release "In Rainbows" themselves online. Without a record label contract (their long-term deal with Capitol Records concluded with 2003's "Hail to the Thief"), the band decided to let fans choose their price, from one pence to infinite.

Very early Wednesday morning, "In Rainbows" was available for download (DRM-free) from http://www.inrainbows.com. The downloading was apparently mostly glitch-free as "In Rainbows" was simultaneously unleashed upon fans, critics and industry executives alike.

In the brief lead-up, fans had energetically debated what the proper price should be for the new album. (A lavish box set is also available for about $82, but won't be shipped for weeks, and the band plans a traditional CD release early next year.) The band's manager, Bryce Edge, said earlier: "We believe if your music is great, the people will pay for it."

Was this a watershed moment for the music industry? And would the 10 tracks of "In Rainbows" be good enough to warrant the fanfare?

The first question remained unanswered Wednesday. A spokesman for Radiohead said figures on how many copies were purchased or what prices were paid were not yet available, and might never be.

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails may soon follow Radiohead's example. The singer announced on the band's Web site on Monday that NIN is now free of any recording contract, stoking expectations for a Radiohead-like album release. "Exciting times, indeed," wrote Reznor.

Meanwhile, reaction to "In Rainbows" was pouring in.

The consensus appeared to hold that "In Rainbows" wasn't necessary a classic like "OK Computer" or as visionary as "Kid A," but was nevertheless a very good, relatively mellow album in line with Radiohead's work in the last six or seven years. Songs like "Nude," "Reckoner" and "House of Cards" show a warmer, more soulful Thom Yorke than fans have grown accustomed to.

The first judgment, as expressed on message boards across the Web, was disappointment at the sound quality. The MP3s are being distributed at 160 kbps, a quality higher than many MP3s (including those on iTunes), but lower than that of a CD. It is also below the threshold set by many peer-to-peer sites like BitTorrent, which mandates files be encoded at 192 kbps.

Music blog Idolator.com said simply: "You know, it's a Radiohead record. It's a pretty good Radiohead record!"

London's Times Online gave the disc four out of five stars, lauding the band for an "insidious index of sonic surprises" that would need more time to fully compute.

RollingStone.com and NME.com both posted track-by-track reviews. Blog Stereogum hosted a mammoth thread, imploring readers to post their thoughts on the album.

One posting at 3:42 a.m. read: "Sounds like Radiohead just being a band that plays songs for the first time in a while. No overriding theme (OK Computer, Hail) just solid songs. ... I need to sleep badly."

In the band's only recent interview, guitarist and instrumental wizard Jonny Greenwood explained to Rolling Stone that the band opted for the unusual release "partly to get it out quickly, so everyone would hear it at the same time, and partly because it was an experiment that felt worth trying."

On the optional pricing, he said: "It's fun to make people stop for a few seconds and think about what music is worth, and that's just an interesting question to ask people."

If nothing else, the gambit returned a long absent aspect to music fandom: anticipation. In the days of album leaks and extensive press coverage, few albums arrive with any surprise. Wednesday's excitement may have been online, but it was just as palpable as a great mass of people huddled outside music store doors at midnight.

___

On the Net:

http://www.radiohead.com

http://www.inrainbows.com

http://www.rollingstone.com

http://www.nme.com

http://www.stereogum.com

http://www.idolator.com

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk

Radiohead Web Site Crashes Due to Heavy Traffic for In Rainbows

By: Spacelab Research Staff

In case you've been absent from the world for the past few days, Radiohead have finished their new album, and you can buy it online starting on October 10th. Its called In Rainbows.

Radiohead turned the music industry on its ear by deciding to forego signing to a label for now to release the whole thing through their web site, letting buyers name their own price for the download version.

And then everybody rushed in. It seems that practically everyone in the world wanted a piece of the Radiohead action and bum-rushed the web site to reserve their copy of In Rainbows. And when web servers have to work that hard, they sometimes get angry. The server crashed due to overloaded traffic.

"It's getting busy in there, busier than they expected," Jonny Greenwood said on the band's W.A.S.T.E. web site. "So, if you please bear with us, it should get cleared out soon. I sound like a bouncer. Get behind the rope. No denim. Thanks for your patience with the site and interest in the record."

http://www.thespacelab.tv/spaceLAB/2007 ... iohead.htm

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Radiohead site crashes after unprecidented demand

After the news broke on Monday that their newest album would only be available online, Radiohead fans in the UK rushed to preorder the new record from the website.

The website it seemed had a little trouble dealing with the numbers but allegedly completely crashed when the US awoke to the news yesterday morning. First it was the east coast, who in turn were followed by the groggy west coast making their own mad dash to Radiohead.com to secure their copy, bringing the site creaking to a halt.

Engineers have since ironed out the site’s problems and everything seems to be back on track and running smoothly.

For those of you interested in the progress of the band’s decision to let the fans choose what they pay for the album, most fans are opting to pay retail price for the album with only a few cheapskates trying to buy the album for a penny.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/Radiohead ... 29661.html

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http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=radioh ... day&sado=1

from Telegraph.co.uk--


Oasis, Jamiroquai to follow Radiohead

By Harry Wallop and Lucy Cockcroft

Last Updated: 9:35am BST 10/10/2007

Some of the music industry’s biggest names are considering offering their music free online following the success of the experiment by the band Radiohead to let fans download their new album without charge.

The band’s website topped the chart of music websites with an 11-fold increase in internet hits after the announcement, according to internet monitoring agency HitWise.

Now Jamiroquai and Oasis, two major names that are not contracted to a record labels, are rumoured to be considering following Radiohead by offering work for free, according to industry sources.

Radiohead refuse to reveal how many fans have pre-ordered their seventh album, In Rainbows, but figures from HitWise show the move pushed the site up from number 43 to the top slot for music websites in the UK.

Google say that searches for Radiohead have increased tenfold this week as fans log on to the band’s site, with the majority – according to the band’s spokesman – spurning the opportunity to download the album for as little as 45 pence and instead signing up for the £40 box set, which includes vinyl records, CD and artwork

The Charlatans are also offering fans their next album completely for free if they visit the site of radio station XFM.

The performers that give away their music for free are expected to make their money from sales of concert tickets and merchandise.

"They’ll all be thinking about it now," said Stuart Clarke at Music Week. "Any big name that is out of contract such as Jamiroquai and Oasis will now see it as an option."

Oasis has already announced that its next single, Lord Don’t Slow Me Down, will be available only to download for 99 pence. Meanwhile rumours abound that Madness, a band with a loyal fanbase amongst 40-somethings, is considering giving away its next album for free.

David Enthoven, founder of ie:music, Robbie Williams’s management company, said: "I think a lot could follow. You’ve got to be sure about your fan base but why would you sign your career away to a record label when CD sales are falling so rapidly?"

While CD sales are falling dramatically, download sales have grown from zero in 2003, to 26.5 million in 2005 which then doubled last year to 53.0 million. However, according to the British Phonographic Industry, for every track that is paid for, twenty are downloaded illegally for free.

Yesterday, Alan McGee, the manager of the Charlatans, said he was astonished by how popular the experiment was proving, even though fans were not yet able to download the album.

"The record industry is obsessed by age and fashion. And so you get these amazing British bands like the Charlatans and the Happy Mondays that were massive 10 years ago and are still great, but are out of contract. How do you get them profile? You give away the record."

He said that the initial feedback had been so positive that the he was already considering booking larger venues for the band to play in when they tour next year. "This experiment is going to work, I feel," he said, adding he was confident that merchandise and concert tickets will make up for giving away the free album for free.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... ead108.xml