It’s time for story Eight Million and Six-teen about how the record labels and the musicians they ostensibly represent no longer get on with each other. This time, we have a bit of a row developing over in the UK, where that proposed knock-people-off-the-Internet-for-file-sharing law is currently stirring division amongst the ranks. One on side, of course, you have the record labels who, in the year 2009, are still afraid of piracy destroying the music business (please note: that’s destroying the music business that made record label execs fat and happy; music hasn’t gone away, it’s merely changed, and change is death to the record label middle men), and on the other, the musicians who recognize that, you know, maybe suing the pants off your customers isn’t the best thing to do.

The labels insist that it’s easy for popular bands such as Radiohead or Nine Inch Nails to experiment with different distribution models, but you can’t turn around and promote Unknown Band the same way. That’s why the record labels are still Very Important. I mean, what kind of 18-year-old in a new rock band knows how to record music, and throw it up on a Web site? That requires teams of highly skilled, highly compensated professionals to figure out.

I don’t know, maybe one of our English readers can offer some sort of perspective here. How is the discussion playing out, if at all? Is there TV coverage, or magazine articles being written? Does anyone give a damn at all?

I have a solution to all this music piracy business, by the way: just ban music outright. No creating it, no listening to it, just gone forever. Now everyone’s miserable, but the problem is solved.

As of this writing it’s going for over $1775, and that’s without shipping. It’s got the lyrics and everything etched onto the lid as well, so that’s really part of the package. I think it’d be better if the record was sealed onto the turntable, but hey, I can do that with my own stunt release.

Who wants to start a pool guessing the date it shows up on Soulseek or a torrent tracker?

Our helpful commenters note that the Swedish part of the site says that the album is fastened to the turntable, and may actually only play 30 times before being worn out. Thanks, guys.

[via TechDirt]

Warner Chappell, Radiohead’s distributor, is announcing that the band “sold” 3 million copies of In Rainbows, the album that they essentially gave away online in a pay-what-you-want scheme. The reports are that they made more on the album than they did on their previous dumpling, Hail to the Thief. Previous sales numbers were in the high hundred thousands, which makes this move particularly interesting.

The < AHREF="http://musically.com/blog/2008/10/15/exclusive-warner-chappell-reveals-radioheads-in-rainbows-pot-of-gold/">official stats show that Radiohead sold 1.75 million CDs – about $17.5 worth, given the vagaries of CD pricing – and about $499,500 worth of iTunes albums (30,000 sold in the first week plus 20K for good measure). They also sold 100,000 box sets. Clearly, they cleaned up but there are still about a million “sales” left over, not to mention countless pirated tracks floating about. One thing, however, is clear: the process can be successful with the right artist and content. By giving old Radiohead fans the opportunity to add premium content to their shopping carts while allowing folks who maybe liked OK Computer but were pretty angry about Kid A (AKA Me) to give the band another chance. Luckily In Rainbows was sufficiently good to warrant a bit of a push by word of mouth. I wonder, also, how much social networking played into organizing the fan base?

Obviously 3 million purchases, in this case, doesn’t directly translate into a multiple of 3 million dollars. Instead, thanks to the pay-what-you-want pricing you have to factor in freeloaders and the oil-rich oligarchs who could have paid Thom and his buddies $1 million for 15 Step alone. However, turning the metric from “dollars” to “sales” creates an interesting new dynamic in an entrenched industry, adding a whiff of Internet-esque metrics to what has previously been simple manufacturing play.

A new study says what we’ve been saying for God knows how long: [music] piracy is here to stay. It’s now up to the industry to figure out how to move forward.

The study, by the MCPS-PRS Alliance (the record companies) and Big Champagne (they measure stuff online!), looked at piracy through the lens of Radiohead’s In Rainbows, the album that was released last fall as a digital download, priced at whatever you wanted to pay. The numbers show that illegal downloads via torrent sites “far exceeded” legal downloads. Some 400,000 torrent downloads occurred the first day it was available.

The study also concludes that there’s a strong brand loyalty toward torrents sites, like OiNK back in the day, and What.cd and Waffles.fm now. It makes sense, seeing as though I can grab a FLAC copy of more or less every album I’d be looking for, complete with PDF/JPG liner notes, in a few minutes. Seconds if it’s a particularly popular album, like Viva la Vida.

In conclusion, the record companies are urged to add value to their music-buying experience if they want to remain relevant.

It’s not even about getting music for free anymore. It’s that the entire BitTorrent experience—I’m a What.cd fan—, from A to Z, is so unrivaled in its quality, why would I even bother with an iTunes or Rhapsody or whatever?

via Drudge

No lights or camera, just (laser) action for new Radiohead video
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Without the use of any cameras or lights, Radiohead has created a new video for its song “House of Cards”.

Wispy points of light capture the ephemeral nature of a party scene as the scanner makes its way through a crowd, eventually ending up outside. Two different scanning systems enable the director, James Frost, to capture the images as they progress from faces to houses in a neighborhood at the end of the cul-de-sac.

In a refreshing merge of tech and no-tech, the making-of video shows the crew physically breaking up the image, by placing various objects in-between the scanner and the subject. A pane of glass with water dripping down it breaks up the image, while another effect is created by waving bits of mirror. The result is an image with a distorted data stream further enhancing the distinctive look.

Check it all out here.

One of my favorite bands from way back when has finally decided to unshackle their EMI catalog and distribute their music through iTunes. Before this, Radiohead (or EMI) was adamant about selling their music bundled and not per track whereas Apple refuses to sell albums as is. You can find all the EMI released albums, the new Greatest Hits album, and videos in the iTunes Plus store. All tracks are DRM-free AAC format.

via Wired

Metallica gave hints in an interview with Rolling Stone that it will follow the Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead model of Internet-based music distribution. (You can already download live show MP3s and FLACs, for the record.) Says Lars Ulrich:

We’ve been observing Radiohead and Trent Reznor and in twenty-seven years or however long it takes for the next record, we’ll be looking forward to everything in terms of possibilities with the Internet.

Unfortunately for Metallica, they released an album called St. Anger back in 2003, universally condemned as the worst piece of recorded music in history. “Madly in anger,” really? What does that even mean?

Oh, and they also helped kill Napster. That’s not how you win friends.

via Slashdot

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Radiohead ‘innovates’ again, releases latest single in separate tracks for fan remixes

Radiohead wasn’t going to take upstart Trent Reznor’s sass much longer. The British band loved by everyone trying to look smart has made its third single off In Rainbows available as an instrument-by-instrument downloade—for remixing! Nobody wins anything for their troubles, except placement on the band’s site.

The band calls these separate tracks “stems” and charges you 99 cents for the privilege of downloading each one off iTunes. If you buy all five stems the band, magnanimously, will send you a Garageband file for easy remixing.

Sound familiar? It should! Reznor did a similar thing three years ago with one of the songs off With Teeth. Only Reznor didn’t charge you to download “stems” or any other pseudo-cutting-edge term.

via National Post

As if you already didn’t know, Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails’ frontman, also “gets” it. “It” meaning that the music business, as we once knew it, died some time ago. Also, he thinks Radiohead’s In Rainbows was a stunt more than anything else.

Reznor, in speaking with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, called out Radiohead for releasing its latest album in “MySpace-quality.” He’s referring to the genuinely subpar audio quality of the digital download, which was only a collection of 160kbps MP3s. Compare this to Nine Inch Nails’ latest album, Ghosts, which he’s made available in all sorts of formats, including FLAC, Apple Lossless and 320 kbps LAME MP3. That’s $5 for an entire FLAC album—that’s foresightedness.

Basically, Reznor is saying that Radiohead half-assed it and undeservingly benefited from the hype. (We probably got caught up in the hype, too. What happened to my trademark cynicism last fall?) Note that Radiohead still depends on a record label, while NIN has completely divorced itself from the “inept.”

Let’s not forget that NIN also released the first volume of Ghosts on popular BitTorrent trackers, no doubt winning the band (or however you want to classify it) some brownie points with “elite” music fans.

Good on Reznor.

Reznor: Radiohead offering was insincere, industry is inept [Ars Technica]

It’s amazing. Ever since the music industry declared war on its customers a few years ago those of us who spend entirely too much time online have debated back and forth on message boards, modern day salons. How dumb is an industry that sues its own customers? (Answer: Very.) What compels people to pirate music in the first place? (Answer: Immediacy. Ease of use. “Good enough” (or better, especially on What.cd and the like) quality.) Does the industry recognize that its role will never be what it was in preceding decades? (Answer: No.)

You know who does “get” all of this, though? Rhapsody, the online music service. Probably not who you were thinking. Well, the headline gives it away, but you know what I mean to say.

In speaking to a director of product management earlier today, I came away with the impression that Rhapsody, out of all the non-iTunes music services, knows exactly what its role in the music business should be, and needs to be.

It helps that the Rhapsody guy I spoke with, one Anu Kirk, is a musician. Not an old, disaffected suit with an eye toward a stock price, but a legitimate fan of, and creator of, music. He’s been with the company since its beginning and continues to believe in its rightness.

But Rhapsody has a little bit of an image problem, something Kirk readily admits. For whatever reason, the service is seen as something tied to Windows. That’s not particularly useful, especially when the anti-Windows, Apple, is so closely associated to (digital) music nowadays. iPod. iTunes. Rip. Mix. Burn. Best not to tie yourself to Redmond in this space.

So what’s Rhapsody’s philosophy? One, that it’s a music service that needs to, and will, diversify itself. The subscription music business couldn’t be any smaller. (Kirk likens the online music business to a pyramid. At the bottom, and most widely used, is piracy. BitTorrent, you name it. Next comes free services like Imeem, followed by pay-to-download services à la iTunes and, lastly, subscription services. Rhapsody.) Rhapsody would rather be known as your one-stop music source. For $15 per month you can access its entire library from any number of devices, be it your desktop in the attic, your laptop at work or a portable player with built-in Wi-Fi. You know, what we all thought the Zune was going to do way back when. Or, if you so desire, you can download a song at $1 a pop and keep it forever (preferably sans DRM… you did pay for it, after all). Give people a choice, Kirk says. Makes sense to this writer.

One issue was brought up that I’ve seen debated ad infinitum, the issue of, “Who wants to subscribe to music then, when you stop paying, it all goes away?” Kirk reckons that people watch TV without recording everything they watch, returning to it at some vague point in the future. (Well, some people do. They’re called packrats.) Same thing with a subscription service. Everything’s listenable at some point, then you stop listening. If you want to hear a song again and again forever then you’d buy it for $1.

Rhapsody has a few ideas for the future to improve its standing in the online music business. New players, new features, new music, etc. The goods, in other words.

It’s not all, “Golly gee, Rhapsody is cool!” Of course not. It still has to convince people that paying for music on a monthly basis not only is OK, but that it’s smart for you, the music fan spending the money. (And how do you compete with free, as in BitTorrent and other forms of piracy? V0, FLAC, high-res JPEG artwork, all handled by people love music. They just happen to hate the industry.) Its Web site could use a new coat of paint. Its library could be a little speedier to get the newest music. (It only just recently added Radiohead’s In Rainbows to its catalogue. That could be a Radiohead problem, but the name of the game is convicing the labels to “get” it. Blood from a stone.

Rather than just say, “Rhapsody? Yeah, never mind,” I’d say to keep an eye on those guys. The right attitude is certainly in place, that much I can say with full confidence. Now it’s just a matter of hitting the final note on time.

[Rhapsody]

Remember the music industry? College kids killed it a few years ago and the top acts are now starting to notice.

U2, covered brilliantly by New York area band 2U, is reportedly thinking about severing its relationship with Universal Music Group. Either 2004’s “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb” (which wasn’t too bad at all) or last year’s re-master of “The Joshua Tree” (good. quite good.) completed the band’s contract with the record label, and now it’s looking to hook up with some concert promoter to handle the release of its future albums.

They could always go the Radiohead route, but judging by comments made by the band’s manager, they don’t seem too hip to technology. Why would they be?

U2 May Be Next to Leave Record Biz [Fox News]

Unfortunately, when you read something like this from TPB you kind of try to change your mind. It doesn’t quite work, but damn fools like this are essentially taking the concepts of fair use and nebulous linking and shitting on content while content providers just step into their traps time after time. No one comes out looking good. Por ejemplo:

lyck.com: Despite the growing legal pressure, the administration of The Pirate Bay appears quite confident it will ultimately prevail. How do you maintain that level of confidence when considering the consequences?

TPB: The consequences are just stupid – we can be fined at the most. Also, we’re VERY confident that we are not breaking any law. In case we lose the trial we will appeal and appeal and appeal. It will take years and years before this case is over – I would guess the prosecutor will appeal when he lose as well – so if we don’t keep things confident it would just put us in personal stress.

The equation here is simple: work with artists to make good content in multiple formats, sell them at increasing price levels depending on quality, make lots of money. MP3s and movies will escape your clutches time and time again and assholes like TPB will make you look like morons all in the name of “fairness and decency.”

The Pirate Bay Interview [Slyck]

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Despite being released three months ago as a digital download, Radiohead’s latest album, In Rainbows, was the best selling album last week. That must really upset the big record labels, who for God knows how long have been claiming that downloadable music would be the death of the album, of physical collections of music. Never mind that Radiohead essentially thumbed its nose to the big labels with In Rainbows.

And yes, as I type this I’m listening to the album again. I’ve never been a huge Radiohead fan, so bear with me as I try to “understand” the band’s sound.

Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’ tops charts [AP/Yahoo!]

The Radiohead front man explained:

We didn’t want it to be a big announcement about ‘everything’s over except the internet, the internet’s the future’, ’cause that’s utter rubbish. And it’s really important to have an artefact as well, as they call it, an object.

Radiohead sent shock waves across the music industry last fall by independently releasing its long anticipated album “In Rainbows.” The band dropped its old label EMI in favor of the self-release and later signed with two independent labels to distribute physical albums in the US and the UK.

I was at CMJ right after the album announcement and it really was all that anyone could talk about. Even now though, the real effect remains unclear. The band refuses to give a firm number as to how many digital copies were moved. Rumors place sales at around 1.2 million, but Yorke has stated that number to be incorrect — although he could just be being coy.

Whatever the case, it’s clear that we’re in the midst of a sea change.

Web-only album ‘mad’, says Yorke [BBC]

This is starting to get interesting. First Radiohead released “In Rainbows” Online, then Saul Williams released the Trent Reznor produced “The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust.” Now it seems that movie studios are, at least to some degree, following suit.

While filming “Jackass 2,” the crew apparently created enough content for two entire films. In the spirit of this new Online distribution model, Paramount and MTV has decided to stream “Jackass 2.5″ in conjunction with Blockbuster via Microsoft Silverlight.

It’s essentially a collection of DVD extras and commentary, but it’s cut together like an extra of sorts, hence the 2.5. Highlights include The Cajun Obstacle Course, The Poof and a whole lot of homoeroticism. At any rate, if you’re a fan of “Jackass” and the movies, it’s about an hour of hilarity and it’s free.

Jackass 2.5

I am in love with this Radiohead 4GB limited edition USB stick. Not only does it look rad, it features all 7 Parlophone albums and includes all of the album artwork. The live album is also included in the bundle and all audio files are WAV so you don’t have to worry about the quality. It’s exclusive to the Radiohead store and going for a massive $166. Yikes! You can also check out a limited edition 7 album box set for a much more reasonable $83 if you’re turned off buy the USB sticks hefty price tag.

Radiohead Store