Radiohead Changes Tack, Joins iTunes

Joe Jay Bee writes "The British rock band Radiohead, who previously stated that they wouldn't want to have their music on Apple's iTunes Music Store (and, indeed, were unhappy when their Kid A album was released via the store) have performed something of an about-face; virtually their entire catalog, including singles and their B-Sides, has appeared on the store. The band previously said they only wanted their work sold as complete albums, which Apple refused to go along with; however their tack has apparently changed, and all their songs are available to mix and match, including their most recent work, In Rainbows. The albums are all available in DRM-free AAC format."

Break From EMI

[Catchyusername]

I think this has more to do with the break from EMI than them warming up to iTunes or the DRM issues.

Pick and choose

[Dan East]

I guess they finally realized that consumers can and will "pick and choose" regardless, so they might as make some money in the process. It doesn't exactly take a genius to figure that one out.

The reason why

[EEDAm]

Radiohead finished their term with EMI Parlophone who originally signed them. In the usual way, their ex-record label are now pushing out as much as they can to cash in - 'Best of Radiohead' just having been released for instance. I suspect this is the cause. Mind you after the crap rip-quality of the In Rainbows interweb release and the volte face of the cd release following, I have less sympathy than I once would have done despite the quality of the work.

Radiohead is customer-savvy

[freedom_india]

Instead of sticking its head in sand like Metallica did, Radiohead is showing surprising maturity and acute understanding of what a customer wants: Go to the Customer, instead of sitting on your arse and expecting them to come to you.
Perception is all-important in Marketing and Radiohead is taking Apple lessons.
By direct-download of their albums (free and paid) they proved DownloadMusic!=crime.
Second once they realized people mix and match their music (just like i mod my computer table and computer), they allowed it instead of sending RIAA goons after them. After all, Alienware does not raid my home, if i chose to decorate my PC with Yuletide spirit. Apple does not care if i laser-engrave my iPod. So should music be: If i mix-and-match their tunes with mine, i should be free.
RIAA believes otherwise. Paying customers think otherwise.
Who pays for Radiohead's food? Customers and not RIAA. So Radiohead did the sensible thing and listened to customers.
By releasing their tunes DRM-Free in iTunes they hit the likeness factor a lot: iPod users now have direct-download to iPod; which is 90% market share of MP3 players (Zune; you Turd, you really have no chance). The DRM-free enables users to mix and match.

Its a pity that Radiohead's music is not country/hip-hop

This is EMI's decision, not Radiohead

[Travis Mansbridge]

This was a decision made by EMI, as they still own the rights to the Radiohead Catalogue. In the same vein, they're attempting to make even more money off of the success of Radiohead by selling "The Best of Radiohead," which, as far as I know, is not approved by the band themselves.

Please do not take this as Radiohead's decision, when it's clearly that of their (former) label.

How to split music

[manwal]

Providing individual tracks from a CD is just one way to present a musical work. Music in itself is sound, not tracks. There is music recorded today that doesn't conform to the idea that each song is a single musical entity, and splitting these works does more good than bad from an artistical point of view, or at least some artists'.

Anyhow, for the same reasons that providing music in these smaller parts is a good thing (which I believe it is), one could easily argue that even smaller parts of the music should be available for buying. What if I'm only interested in measures two to four of the second bridge? It might sound crazy, but as a musician I sometimes meet this exact problem when transcribing songs from memory. Why should I have to buy the whole song when I just want four seconds of it?

Re:DRM - Free

[stewbacca]

Or maybe, as an artist, you want your work exposed to as many people as possible and iTunes is the #1 music distributor in the world.

Re:DRM - Free

[Anonymous Coward]

Great - now I can get miserable one track at a time rather than having to endure a whole album's worth of self-pitying derivative crap.

Money talks

[192939495969798999]

I'm sure that when apple drove a dump truck full of money up to radiohead-quarters, all of a sudden selling a few albums here and there at indy record stores started to look kinda dumb.

Re:DRM - Free

[aceofspades1217]

<quote>Or maybe, they decided they like money more than integrity.</quote>

Um so your basically saying that simply by selling their albums on iTunes they have no integrity. After all they did release them in DRM Free format and have never gone after filesharing. Heck radiohead doesn't even have a Music Label and don't have to listen to the RIAA or anyone about P2P.

If they want to give people th option to buy their music over iTunes...why not. It's not like they can put them on iTunes for free even if they wanted to....So what you want them to stop selling CDs also because you don't think they have integrity simply for selling something.

Obviously they give people the option of getting it for free on P2P or buying it. If you want to support them buy it if not don't. They aren't saying don't download our music TPB they just turn a blind eye to it. So cmon why must selling something be considered a lack of integrity?

Re:DRM - Free

[samkass]

Yes, Apple is really getting evil. First they keep prices at $0.99 per track when the music industry wanted to charge 2x to 3x (or more) that much for popular tracks... and now they're allowing customers to buy whatever they want. Without DRM. The horror!

Remember, Apple's clout is the only thing standing between you and the record labels at this point. Even if you do nothing but buy from Amazon's MP3 store, you're benefiting from Apple iTunes, since the labels would never have given Amazon such a sweet deal if they weren't trying to break Apple's position in the market.

KidA individual songs available at Amazon also

[Anonymous Coward]

I just bought "Optimistic" from Amazon, DRM free.
Apparently the album only policy has also fallen at Amazon, not just ITS.
-Jay