Opinions on the new Radiohead album.....

[scruff]

Not quite the same that, is it?

They are as bad as each other in my book. 160 is good for soundclips on an online record-store... that's it.

If it cost them extra to encode a download at 320kbps or FLAC then fair enough. But skimping on a digital format is just wrong... like Real Player.

 

[Dubversion]

so it's lots of free publicity in advance of a pretty bog standard album release, with a 40 quid boxed set thrown into the mix too

in one sense i'm not knocking it - the industry needs to reasses how it works, and i have some respect for how Radiohead conduct themselves. But anyone who thinks this represents some brand new paradigm in artist / fan relationships or is in any sense 'value' is kidding themselves.

 

[gabi]

Complete and utter scam i'd agree. Still, I'm downloading it now (not from them!), we'll see what its like.

Very cynical of them to make it 160kb though. If i was a genuine fan id be mighty pissed off with my anti capitalist heroes.

 

[scruff]

If i was a genuine fan id be mighty pissed off with my anti capitalist heroes.

Fucking right!

 

[editor]

in one sense i'm not knocking it - the industry needs to reasses how it works, and i have some respect for how Radiohead conduct themselves. But anyone who thinks this represents some brand new paradigm in artist / fan relationships or is in any sense 'value' is kidding themselves.

Oh come on. What Radiohead have done *is* important. They're not the first, but they're the biggest by a country mile.

 

[editor]

If i was a genuine fan id be mighty pissed off with my anti capitalist heroes.

Still better and cheaper than iTunes though and 'nuff people seemed to have paid for their tracks without complaint.

And how could you be pissed off by an act offering you an album for just about fuck all?!!

 

[editor]

Fucking right!

Yeah! The bastards! Offering an entire album for 45p. The cunts!

 

[Dubversion]

Oh come on. What Radiohead have done *is* important. They're not the first, but they're the biggest by a country mile.

what have they done?

gained a lot of publicity by offering a low-quality version of an album that anyone who likes them will by on CD in January, much as they would have done if they'd downloaded it off soulseek or something.

It's shrewd, and it's not an act of corporate greed.

But it's also nothing important nor magnanimous.

 

[Dubversion]

And how could you be pissed off by an act offering you an album for just about fuck all?!!

because - obviously - if they were serious about meeting the challenges of new media head on, they'd have had the cojones to release the digital version at a decent bitrate, thus removing the need to buy the CD to get decent sound quality. By releasing a low rate version, it invalidates the whole process IMO

 

[Detroit City]

I'll just listen to the Radiohead albums I already have, thank you

 

[gabi]

Yeah! The bastards! Offering an entire album for 45p. The cunts!

I think the point is that the 'true fans' might have paid a fair bit more than 45p. I know a friend of mine has paid a lot more than that as he's a dedicated fan.

I received an email from him earlier asking whether I'd fucked his headphones up last week as the new radiohead album sounds a bit shit...

(hes far from being a techie btw, so emails about bitrate etc would have gone right over his head)