Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has declared, in an interview with The Believer, that the band has no plans to record another full-length album, preferring instead to focus on singles. A one-off from a band that can afford to call the shots, or a sign of things to come in entertainment, not to mention software?
Yorke cites the creative burden of recording an album, but I have to think the decision is as much about marketing an album as it is recording it. As Yorke relates:
None of us want to go into that creative hoo-ha of a long-play record again. Not straight off. I mean, it's just become a real drag. It worked with "In Rainbows" because we had a real fixed idea about where we were going. But we've all said that we can't possibly dive into that again. It'll kill us.
"In Rainbows" worked on two or three different levels. The first level is just sort of getting a point across that we wanted to get across about music being valuable. It also worked as a way of using the Internet to promote your record, without having to use iTunes or Google or whatever...and it also worked financially.
To make it work, however, Radiohead went to great lengths to market the album, far less than it had to invest in distributing its latest gem, "Harry Patch." Regardless, while some music arguably makes more creative sense as part of an album, many songs stand alone and better fit the way music is being defined, distributed, and monetized.
This is perhaps best exemplified by comments, cited in a Wall Street Journal story, from singers Robert Earl Keen and Perry Farrell in the wake of the Lollapalooza festival:
"The music business is upside down," said alt-country singer-songwriter Robert Earl Keen. "You don't tour to support your record. You put out a record to support a tour."
"Do you see people going record shopping? No," said Perry Farrell of Jane's Addiction. "Downloading free music. Yes. Going out for live music. Yes. I love recorded music, but the best bang for my buck is the night I go out."
If you can accomplish this with singles, rather than the burden of an album, why not go that route? This is particularly intriguing given the continued pace of piracy, as a new study finds, because it requires a band to invest less in album creation and more time in monetizing the music through concerts and other "services."
Ditto for software. Google has already showed one way to get beyond the "album mentality" by providing its code on a perpetual beta basis. There is no big, once-and-for-all unveiling of Google's software, but rather a steady release of updates.
Open source is the same. Customers subscribe to a series of improvements and services around the software, rather than buying into a big licensing event. The emphasis is on what comes after the initial adoption of the software, not a bunch of marketing and hype to get people to use the software in the first place. The software largely sells itself.
In music and in software, we're moving to a services-based economy that relies less on DRM (digital rights management) and more on service-based connections between consumer and creator. The two blend ever more frequently in this digital age through the collaborative interplay between producer and audience.
For my part, I hope that Radiohead will release new singles early and often, with an emphasis on getting them out quickly to test their appeal, then fine-tuning them over time. The same holds true for software. My only question is if at some point in the future we'll see Linus Torvalds and Thom Yorke jamming together on stage.
Now that would rock.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Forget about your house of cards
And I'll deal mine.
So sings Radiohead in its excellent "House of Cards" off the In Rainbows album, and so declares Radiohead with the open sourcing of the data behind its "House of Cards" video. How many bands do you know that have their own spot on Google's open-source code site? Radiohead does.
As The Guardian notes, the experiment is not without some difficulty (a bit like other open-source projects, ironically):
Google has also provided a handy visualiser to help you play around with the code, although, theoretically at least, you should be able to mashup the data on a range of video editing applications, including QuickTime Pro and the open-source VirtualDub. You should be able to use iMovie on the iPhone as well....
Early reports from the group, which launched on Monday, indicate that the data visualisation is tricky. Several users reported that the visualisation failed to work or was distorted. The less technically inclined can make do with a nifty desktop application that allows you to play around with a visualisation of Thom Yorke's head.
Yet another example of Radiohead pushing the mainstream music industry toward alternative ways to distribute and create music, and the media around it. The video's director, James Frost, captures this well:
... Read more
I was just listening to Radiohead's beautiful "True Love Waits," and thought I'd share it. I love Thom Yorke's lyrics:
And true love waits
In haunted attics
And true love lives
On lollipops and crisps
Genius. You can listen to it here. If you have yet to embrace Radiohead, this is your chance at contrition and penitence.
It's official. It might have worked. It might not have worked. But whether or not Radiohead's experiment with free distribution of In Rainbows worked for the band or not, it's not going to happen again anytime soon. Thom Yorke, Radiohead's frontman, explains:
"Yes. It was a one-off in terms of a story. It was one of those things where we were in the position of everyone asking us what we were going to do. I don't think it would have the same significance now anyway, if we chose to give something away again. It was a moment in time," Yorke told the Hollywood Reporter.
Alas! First MySQL considers closed extensions, and now Radiohead (apparently) returns to traditional distribution models. Sigh. The open world is coming to an end! :-)
At least it will be cheaper for me to buy proprietary Radiohead.
Radiohead is changing the way the music industry works. Pay what you wish? Check. Make your own music video for its songs? Check.
Now Radiohead is taking things one step further by partnering with Apple to give fans a chance to remix one of its best songs from its fantastic In Rainbows album:
The contest offers up the single "Nude" from the album for remix. The band has for sale on iTunes "stems" for the bass, voice, guitar, strings/fx and drums for the song and anyone who purchases all five gets access to a GarageBand file that can be opened in GarageBand or Logic.... Read more
Radiohead is asking its fans to collaborate with the band to create its next music video. Unlike its "pay what you like" move, Radiohead isn't charting new territory with this move. It has been done before. The Shins did it, as have Modest Mouse, Beastie Boys, and others.
And yet Radiohead's video contest is a bit different:
... Read moreTrent Reznor, the mastermind behind Nine Inch Nails, is not a fan of Radiohead's digital release of In Rainbows. Radiohead made waves with its stick-in-the-eye approach to the music labels by giving away its album on a pay-what-you-like basis.
For Reznor, that's not enough because of how Radiohead opted to release the album:
What [Radiohead] did was a cool thing; I think the way they parlayed it into a marketing gimmick has certainly been shrewd. But if you look at what they did, though, it was very much a bait and switch to get you to pay for a MySpace-quality stream as a way to promote a very traditional record sale.
... Read more
For years the music industry has fought the idea that music should be free. Today, it has decided to play along.
In a sign that the music labels are finally desperate enough to experiment with new models of distribution and monetization, more and more bands and their labels are following in the footsteps of Radiohead to discover that "free" can pay.
... Read moreNow a host of new services, with the backing of major labels, are promising to revolutionise how music is distributed by offering millions of tracks, from much-hyped wannabes to established acts such as U2, for nothing.
Competing for attention at the Midem trade show, the services promise a global jukebox, paying for the free music by attracting advertising. Meanwhile, some acts are queueing up to swap their deals with labels for agreements with big advertisers which would further blur the line between bands and brands.
Ask Thom Yorke, lead singer of Radiohead, whether the band's foray into a "pay what you want" model for music was successful and he'll tell you, as he told David Byne (Talking Heads) in this Wired interview:
In terms of digital income, we've made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever--in terms of anything on the Net. And that's nuts. It's partly due to the fact that EMI wasn't giving us any money for digital sales. All the contracts signed in a certain era have none of that stuff.
Sounds great, except that he's comparing "more money" to "zero money." Apparently the music companies don't pay new bands (or old?) squat for digital sales (read: iTunes) of their music. I can't fathom why. I suppose because they don't have to.
But where the interview becomes useful and interesting is when Yorke talks through the relevance of this new model for new bands. Teaser: it's not.
... Read moreRadiohead. New Year's Eve. 9:00 PST (Midnight EST). In concert. Free. Here's how.
Enjoy.
