Radiohead Fans Feel Duped By Free Album

MTV News:

When Radiohead announced last week that they would be releasing their seventh album, In Rainbows, via their official Web site, there was much fanfare and some honest-to-goodness debate about the future of the music industry, the validity of major labels and just how people consume music.

But in the days since that announcement, a whole lot of that fanfare has curdled, thanks to moves by the band and its management that some see as dishonest, distasteful and, well, downright un-Radiohead.

Read the whole story: MTV News

Comments

[Wilsonfisk89]

Wow, Radiohead on MTV??? Whats the deal, there are no more pressing issues about the love lives of pre-pubescent blonde teens from Socal to publish? How did this article about an actual band that records actual music get pass the editor????
The fact is this, Radiohead put out a great product. The music is remarkable, and DUH, yes, its only slightly better sounding that Itunes, what did you xpect??? If you are downloading it offline, that why would you expect anything different. I for one, and all of my friends, are very, very happy with it. I paid like 5.00$, and next year when the actual CD drops, ill buy that too. Its called being a fan.

[DocManhattan]

Way past time to replace this story on HuffPo with one that's not quite so ... what's the word ... completely stupid.

[pizzmoe]

No one was duped. They paid whatever they wanted for a great album. The people who are that picky about the sound quality (and I am one of them) will happily pay for either the discbox (and i am one of them) or the standard issue CD when it comes out. Whiners!

[GetoffMylawn]

I think most of these dickhead fans would free ripped off and duped even if Radiohead came to their house and gave the spoiled brats a free live performance.

[TJTelecaster]

Can these guys even play..?

Or are they just more angry down strokers..?

Just asking..

[Jezdukowski]

Actually, "The Bends" is a GREAT guitar album. Don't care for much of their more experimental music after that (I actually HATE Kid A), Pablo Honey had some pretty cool riffs as well.

[Jezdukowski]

Oh and Telecasters are Johnny Greenwood's (Radiohead's lead guitarist)guitar of choice :-]

[drblack]

proving the old adage "You Get What You Pay For".

Mp3s ,even encoded at 320 kbs are still crappy.
Cds are even crappy when you consider todays digital recorders are 24 bit 192khz compared to CDs 16 bit 44.1khz.
Cds were developed in the 80s and the technology has come along way.
MP3 format was developed to make quick downloads but at the expense of sound quality. lots of todays dance and rap music has such little dynamic range and texture it makes no difference , but if you listen to real artistic music played on real instruments instead of a collection of samples and drum machines the analog format is still king.
I hope to see cds become 24 bit and at least 96khz.
Also there is a better format than mp3s for down and up loading called OGGVorbis. It is free but unfortunately there has been no portable player released because the business guys don't like free stuff.(getting linux drivers for all my recording equipment is almost impossible even though there are so many who ask the companies to make them...it is all about money)
I still love listening to my vinyl lps ...great warm analog sound and since I take care of them they don't crack and pop.

[ControlledBurn]

"Duped by free album?"

[Tismo]

Of course, the fact that MTV makes a nice profit from advertising by record companies on its channels and website has nothing to do with this story.

Please, folks, the old guard of the music industry is terrified that their bread-and-butter artists might figure out that they don't need to front 75% of the profits to corporations, and any major media outlet that has corporate ties to the industry (and oh-so-many do) isn't going to push a story that's unfavorable to that particular profit potential.

"In Rainbows" was downloaded 1.2 million times in the first two days. Based on the stats gleaned from polls of respective 3,000/5,000 samples in the UK, that means that the band potentially grossed upwards of $20 million (note: that includes those who purchased the box set, with percentages in the two polls mentioning a buy-in of 10-15%). Over 50% who've downloaded have at least paid something, with the average buy-in from that group ranging around $8/download.

This is just knocking-kneed industry apologists planting some negative news in order to try to stop the hemhorraging of sales in a sea change to the way they want to do business.

[alguien]

pretty soon, the industry's main means of income will be from suing music pirates.

[dexxjones]

I paid and got no confirmation, no ability to ask, no email address to complain to, nothing. it wasnt such a bad idea, but they have fucking baboons administering it. that site is a disgrace, and barely in english.

its a shame because if it had been done right, they would have made a fortune and showed the world that record companies can be bypassed.

its a fucking disgrace.

[DocManhattan]

Umm, has it ever occurred to you -- that if it didn't work when you paid, then you can just download it again for nothing and quit whining! Maybe even try if from a different computer if that's the issue.

I don't know what kind of weird system you're working on, but the site has clear instructions and you don't have to wait for any kind of e-mail. When you place your order, there's a download link on the order confirmation page. That's it.

Are you sure you were on the right web site?

[verboden]

This is such a non-issue. If MTV had written a story based on research, and not the other way around, they would find that hardly anyone is complaining. Radiohead has a very loyal fan base; if the rest of the fan base is like me, they trust that the band weighed pros and cons and delivered what they thought was a fair deal.

I think it sounds amazing, for what it's worth.

[DocManhattan]

Suppose it's inevitable that some arse would find something to complain about in Radiohead's move ... I find it extremely hard to justify whingeing about this issue when they basically handed these songs to me and I wasn't obliged to pay a penny for it.

There are certainly some audiophiles who may hear the difference in sound quality between 160kbps and 192kbps. But you'd have to be a contrary git to think that a good song sudddenly starts sounding bad at some point between those bit rates. So, what do you have? A package of great songs playing at a decent bit rate. Me, I'm just a musician, not an audiophile -- and I feel that I've been treated more than fairly.

[Zapatista]

= GREATEST BAND EVER


Thom Yorke = Lyrical Genius

[dryfactoidobotanoid]

"genius." yeah right. whatever.

[DocManhattan]

dryfactoidbotanoid, do you actually have something to say on this matter? I'm just wondering why you're posting here, that's all.

And yes, genius is the right term for it. (Though I don't think lyrics are what makes Yorke a genius.)

[dryfactoidobotanoid]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHEkzLQyG48
"Great Waves" by Dirty Three featuring Chan Marshall

... On fire.

Humans running for cover,
Wishing for life, gripping the light
House lift up, trees lift up
Cars intersect in the middle of the sky.

O time found, no pull, no gravity on the ground
Givin' up--it's over
The world's weight is over
The limit

Our bodies are exploding
As the sky spills through our mouths.
All the blue blood is flowing
The cities, its contents have been ripped out.

The world is gone.
Did you know it would last this long?
You made it to the dark, now you're gone.
You are gone.

Great waves
Frozen in a secret space
A great big place,
Dark-spilling universe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tuGrEynG68
MOGWAI - Travel Is Dangerous

Who might know of this?
The notes we left
Our final thoughts
And we knew they'd get ours out

*Sink, sink*
*Drowned* by our country
Great machine
Is crushed, old and rotten
Never surface again

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItHkO-giOdE
Cat Power - The Greatest

Once I wanted to be the greatest
TWO FISTS OF SOLID ROCK
WITH BRAINS THAT COULD EXPLAIN
Any feeling
Lower me down
PIN ME IN
Secure the grounds
FOR THE LEAD
AND THE DREGS OF MY BED
I'VE BEEN SLEEPING
For the later parade

Once I wanted to be the greatest
No wind or water fall could STALL me
And then came the rush of the flood
The stars at night turned DEEP to dust

[DocManhattan]

So you like Mogwai and Cat Power. OK ...

Still wondering ...

By the way, I like some of Cat Power's stuff, but she probably played the worst gig I've ever seen. Ever watched a girl at a party sit alone in a corner with a guitar and get quietly stoned? That was her, except she was up on stage and I'd paid to see it.

Radiohead in Japan in 2003 was probably the best gig I've ever seen. A religious experience, that was ...

[trex67]

"= GREATEST BAND EVER"

Certainly one of my favorites of all time. "OK Computer" gets my vote as the best album ever.

Those people complaining about 160kbps are just being assholes. Unless listening to exceptionally good speakers, VERY few people can tell the difference between 128kbps and 320kbps or higher. In other words - good enough for basically a free download. If you absolutely need to hear the higher quality of a CD, buy the damn thing and quit complaining.

[chromodynamics]

While it is true that the higher the bit rate in an MP3, the higher the sound quality, most file shared MP3 are only 128-bit. At 160-bit, the new Radiohead album will play in the most number of MP3 players.

Some devices can't decompress files larger than 160-bit, and I think Radiohead knows this. For an Album that comes to their fans almost free (especially to those who can least afford to buy one), just being able to play it in your low-end $19.95 third-world player is good enough.

[Zapatista]

Got the box set for 81.00 $ and can't wait ...

greatest music ever put together


puts Mozart to shame

[Oread]

...and that's why I paid absolutely nothing for it. anything like that's too good to be true. and, so we're clear, it sounds fine. sounds like a radiohead album. well, the latter half does. the first half is utter wank. Worth every pence.

[dryfactoidobotanoid]

[copied from un-published comment to this blog]:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julia-mandle/what-did-we-bargain-for_b_68113.html

the twentieth century madness of nationalism has been replaced with the twenty-first century madness of fake counter-terrorism.

"What does it mean to be an American today?"

the answer is, it doesn't matter. America simply represents the state power of the United States, period. corporatism is globalized, culture is globalized, and America is no longer made of "Americans" any more than Americans have a voice in the dominant mass media culture of short-circuited thinking and the mass facade of corporate public relations.

the ruling class long anticipated the death of nationalism through noise and apathy. that is why they have replaced the fake communal identity of nationality with the collective fear of fake terrorism (see Webster Tarpley).

the ruling class killed nationalism, deliberately. from now on, there is no more America -- there is only money and power, and there is no more refuge from greed and fear except in our own realized serenity.

[trex67]

Yeah. Totally relevant to the topic.