Sunday, September 30, 2007

Stunning news of the week

So this news is going to be reported EVERYWHERE by tomorrow, but pitchfork has the word on the subject at the moment. For the past week or so, Radiohead has had cryptic messages on its website and http://www.radioheadlp7.com/ indicating news was upcoming.

Boy, is it!

Radiohead's 7th LP is being released, online, on October 10th! Apparently they haven't resigned to a label, and they're distributing it themselves, online. The new LP is titled In Rainbows, is 10 tracks long, and will be available in only 10 days.

Also:
  • You can preorder a music pack that includes the actual CD, the album on vinal, a second CD with additional songs, and some added artwork. The thing is shipped on December 3rd, but costs 40 pounds.
  • If you only want the new LP, apparently you can pay however much you want for the download. Yes, it appears that Radiohead is not setting a price for download.

More details here.

Thoughts:

  1. Radiohead's giving the finger to the major music labels. Thinking that even if everyone only pays $1 or $2 for the whole album, that's about how much they'd get from every CD sold through a major label. Thinking that their concert revenue is astronomical and that album sales drive ticket sales.
  2. Only 10 days between album announcement and release date? This means that Radiohead is even more secretive than Bill Belichick, Steve Jobs, or John Lasseter. I guess something like this would be impossible to pull off with a music label, since there would be too many people in the know to keep such a plan secret.

Wow. It's been, what, two or three years since Hail to the Thief? Guess we have something to look forward to on October 1oth!

2 comments:

Alexis Leon said...

The new album will be coming out almost four and a half years after Hail to the Thief, Chris. The whole class of '07 went through college without a new Radiohead album ever being released!

In fact, last semester I ran into a student of mine while in line at Panera (think ABP) who asked me what music was I listening to on my ipod. After I replied, he said "Oh, Radiohead, yes, I've heard about them."
--That was the same week I had turned 30. I've yet to recover.

CSmith429 said...

OK, right - I remember now, it came out when I was a first year. I remember it accompanying me on my 30 minute trek to campus. It's amazing to think that OK Computer came out 10 years ago!