Radiohead Gets It

image credit: Colorado State University


Note to record companies: This is how people listen to music nowadays.


From Business Week online:

I've written elsewhere about how I don't much care for Radiohead's music. But what they're doing with the selling of their just-announced new album is nothing short of brilliant.

For starters: Radiohead--probably the biggest unsigned band in the world--is putting out said album, In Rainbows, without any record label. For another: If you want to buy a digital download of the album, you go to Radiohead's Web site and pay . . . whatever price you want to pay.

Getting physical copies of In Rainbows does cost something, but for a high price one gets a pretty luxe package.

Radiohead's Business Head

While this is not a unique practice (a site called Magnatune has a similar policy for all their artists), it's unusual for big-name performers. The question at this point should not be "what makes Radiohead so brilliant", it should be "why doesn't everyone else get a clue?"

The technology of today has completely outmoded the old music industry. A song never has to be put on a physical medium anymore to be distributed to millions of people. All you have to do is put it on the Internet. Music companies, and their idiot cousins in video, should be doing their best to provide places where people can download content that's free of digital rights management (DRM) software. That service is worth money, and they could very easily be earning that money. Instead, they try to sue working mothers, people who don't even own a computer, and the people who do understand what's possible in the medium.

This has been made possible thanks to some recent changes in our laws, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), and recent extensions of copyright law, it is virtually impossible to not run afoul of some intellectual property law when you work on the Internet. The DMCA has even been used by makers of garage door openers to sue (albeit unsuccessfully) a competitor whose remote controls worked with their door openers. In another case, still pending I believe, a printer manufacturer is suing a recycling company for violation of the DMCA. Advocates of open source software, which I use almost exclusively both at home and at work, have long argued that these extensions have imposed placed ridiculous restraints on both trade and the exchange of ideas.

So as soon as we get our country back from the lunatics who want to involve us in useless wars and shred the Constitution, I vote we do something to change this.

Meanwhile, it's nice to know there are artists out there who get it.