Macbraughton

If you didn’t already know, Radiohead released their seventh album, “In Rainbows” a few weeks ago.

Now, they are probably my favourite contemporary band, but I had no idea that they had released an album, partly because when I’m working I have no time to do anything else, and partly because of the way that they did it.

As if being a great band that makes awesome music isn’t enough, they are so far ahead of the game it makes me green with envy.

Maybe a few other bands that nobody has ever heard of have released an album from their own website available for download, but nobody with a name as big as Radiohead has done it, until now. And they gave no warning, no advertising, no nothing. They just posted it one day. The internet community spread the word from there.

The craziest part? Well, technically, it is free. I mean, yeah, like you don’t have to pay any money for it. You can go there right now to radiohead.com and download it. They ask you for a donation, which I gladly gave them, but it isn’t mandatory. If you’re totally broke but have an internet connection you can download it for free. From what I understand there is no DRM either so you can have your buddy download it and make a copy for you. Unbelievably you can do this without breaking the law! This just wants to make me cheer and scream and shout because I think it is so cool and it is so against the mainstream of media distribution.

I guess the band is in talks now with different labels to distribute physical copies through the old record store medium, but you can still buy a special collector’s set on the site as well. They decided on this strategy since they didn’t have a label anymore, they finished their contract with EMI with “Hail to the Thief”.

I personally think that record companies should die, and soon. More music should be distributed this way. The artists get all the money, none of it skimmed off by the middlemen. Do I think that things will actually go this way? Probably not. At least not anytime soon.