Radioheaded for digital freedom

Radiohead, the alternative English rock band best-known for their hit single, ‘Creep’, and for releasing their previous album, In Rainbows (2010) for a nominal amount online, has taken another step towards bridging the divide between the digital and the traditional music industry.

Breaking the usual practice of a staggered release, they unleashed their latest album, The King of Limbs, worldwide on Saturday — online. And you can, for a small amount, download it and listen to it, legally, whether you’re in New York or Mumbai.

Why is this a big deal? Well, CD releases are generally staggered in a pyramidal fashion.  The US and the United Kingdom are the first markets, and a gap of six to eight months is customary before a new album makes its way to Indian shores.

But the new Radiohead album will be leapfrogging over traditional marketing and publicity hype. It will be heard simultaneously throughout the world — making for a collective listening experience that has largely died out. The album will also deny major record companies the chance to reissue the same material in different avatars and milk fans who buy different “collectable” versions of the same record.

Radiohead hit international fame with their first song, 'Creep' in 1992, and the band went on to sell more than 25 million copies of their CDs worldwide by 2007.

The announcement from Radiohead sent the internet into a tizzy, and as super-fan Jasleen Kundal puts it, “This is the biggest release in years. Radiohead has constantly evolved, and the new direction into jazz and new-age sounds they are taking is very exciting”. Many Indian alternative-rock bands, such as Lounge Piranha and The Pulp Society, can trace their roots back to this band from Oxfordshire.

An extravagantly packaged version of the new album will be issued on May 9. However, the music itself was effectively issued on Saturday, February 19, when digital downloads became available to those who had made pre-orders.

Six months ago, Colin Greenwood, the band’s bassist, had, in an essay on the website Index on Censorship hinted at how, for the next album, the band was planning to deviate from the ‘give-what-you-want’ policy of their last album, In Rainbows.

“We have just finished another group of songs, and have begun to wonder about how to release them in a digital landscape that has changed again…I’m unconvinced that the internet has replaced the club or the concert hall as a forum for people to share ideas and passions about music...(but) traditional marketplaces and media are feeling stale, the charts are dominated by TV talent-show acts, and we are trying to find ways to put out our music in a way that feels as good as the music itself. The ability to have a say in its release, through the new technologies, is the most empowering thing of all.”