I finally managed to find somewhere to listen to Radiohead's "In Rainbows" today. I'm planning on buying it at some point when I'm not recovering from a coast-to-coast move and it's actually out on CD, but for the mean time, I was grateful to find it being streamed on iMeem. I can only assume it's legal, because it is iMeem, after all, and they're legit.
Most of you that pay attention to this sort of thing (and I know some of you don't, and that's cool too) have probably heard about Radiohead's move to release this new album. Rather than generating a lot of buzz for months and months and advertising everywhere, they've just discreetly posted to their web page every so often that the album was proceeding well, and then all of a sudden, there was an announcement on the 1st of October that the record would be released to everyone in the world simultaneously on the morning of October 10th via digital download. On top of that, the price for the record was left completely up to the individual buyer, with zero pounds and zero pence an available option. The band was releasing the record themselves -no label support- which means that they get pretty much 100% of the money paid for every copy. It's an all-around great move. Enormous amounts of PR for free, a 100% cut of album profits (which is about 85-90% higher than what they'd get from a major label), and a challenge to the notions of any particular way that things have to be done.
But you can read about all of that anywhere. There's something else about this release model that I think is so cool. Let's go back a few years to, say, the early 90's. These were almost the last years of a really great phenomenon. Each occurrence of this phenomenon started when music fans around the world (or across the nation, or wherever) found out that their favorite band or arist was going to release a new record on such and such a date. Anticipation grew, there was no end of fan speculation about what the new record would be like, and every tidbit of information spread among the fans largely by word of mouth. A few months would pass, and then, depending on the popularity of the artist, fans would line up outside the record stores to get a copy of the new recording. Everyone would go home and listen to it, absorb the details, and then get together with their friends to talk about it. There was a simultaneous experience, and everyone was able to get involved. Music of all forms has always had a strong community aspect to it, but the Day One Record Store Queue was a really special thing. I'm not going to pretend like I'm old enough to have experienced it more than a few times myself, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate it, right?
I remember my first exposure to the technology of mp3's. This was back in the days when it made any sense at all to be a member of AOL, months after the time when they limited your minutes and there was a small surcharge to access a new frontier known as the World Wide Web. In the music chats, and probably elsewhere, people started to distribute these tiny, tiny files that you could play in a brand new program called Winamp. (But unless your computer was pretty powerful, you couldn't do anything else at the same time.) I was introduced to Napster some time around the beginning of 2000 ("It will find mp3's from tons of people all at once!"), and again, I won't pretend: I used it a little. Not much, because downloading music on a dial-up connection was too tedious. But enough that I can say I saw the revolution coming. My ear was to the ground when the stirrings started to gather steam and hint that there may be a stampede on the way.
A decade later, and no one that's inclined to do otherwise has to wait until an actual release date to listen to a new album. There just isn't quite the same feeling anymore of going to the record store on the first day, going home with a brand new record, and knowing that all over the world, or at least the country, thousands of people are experiencing the same thing you are for the very first time.
With the rise of the information age, it's become harder and harder to digest a new record without encountering, to some extent, other people's advice on what you should think of it, even before you've taken the shrink wrap off. Or clicked "Buy." It's too bad. But Radiohead took a step forward (backward?) with this release. No press copies, no early streaming, no opportunities for that core fan base to rub it in everyone else's faces that they heard it first. In the small hours of the morning on October 10th, everyone got the same chance to listen for the first time, at the same time. I wish I'd been involved. I mean, it's a very good record, yes, but I can hear that now. I wish I'd been able to listen to it for the first time knowing that scores of other people were listening to it for the first time. The internet has destroyed a lot of what we formerly considered to be "community," but this was at least a step back in the same sense as looking at the moon and knowing that your friends and family look at it too, no matter where they are. And that counts for something.
I also appreciate that the band realizes that it's worth it to turn this release into something that's only available online. I like innovation as much as the next guy, but there's something wonderful about having a tangible, physical record that is just truly inimitable. It's why I collect LP's. Yes, the sound quality is better on an LP, and yes, they're inexpensive, and yes, the hunt is as good as the purchase. But the biggest reason is that I can actually hold the music. I can look at the grooves in my hand and know that if my vision was a thousand times better, I could actually kind of see the music. I can pick it up and see cover art that’s a foot across, and I can hold that too. So you can call it a cash grab on the part of the band if you want, or you can look at it as simply a piece of installation art to be spread, one living room at a time, across the whole world (and there may be something to that, but for once, it’s installation art I can get into), but I still want the discbox. Call me crazy.
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