If you don't already love Radiohead for their music (and dammit, you should) you gotta love them for this. Their new CD - which is really good by the way - is available only from their website and you pay whatever you want to for it. I downloaded it the other day and paid £6.00 which I guess is about $CDN12, and apparently most people have been shelling out about $10. Here are some guys that are embracing the new order, unlike the record companies who keep suing their customers and trying to put the internet genie back into the bottle. I mean you can understand them trying to protect their business, and let's face it, we have all downloaded (stolen) a few mp3's here and there haven't we? But these guys just don't get it.
There's also a companion piece here regarding Trent Reznor.
I haven't bought any of it myself yet, but I also have to applaud the iTunes store and Apple for arm twisting record companies (well, so far just EMI I think) into selling Digital Rights Management-free music. Nothing pisses me off more than this DRM shit - I bought it and I will do whatever the hell I want with it. I think what I liked most about it was how Steve Jobs totally painted the record companies into a corner with this bit. Say what you like about the guy but he's pretty cagey.
I'm digressing a little now but I also found this piece interesting about how classical music sales got an ironic shot in the arm when the BBC put a bunch of Beethoven on their website. Of course the record companies got all excited and somehow the files are no longer available. Someone please explain to me how music in the public domain recorded by the BBC with their own musicians is any business of a record company.
Rant concluded.
