In Rainbows

Yesterday I downloaded Radiohead's new album 'In Rainbows.' Many of you know about the deal by which you get this album: you go to their website and decide what you want to pay them, and then they email you a link to download all the files. You can put nothing in the amount if you want to, or you could put like 500 dollars or a thousand dollars.

I chose to give them the equivalent of ten dollars. Not to say I couldn't have gotten it from Brian, who downloaded it on Wednesday, but I decided that my payment would be a proverbial middle finger to the RIAA. I think a lot of people felt like this too--if there weren't so many good bands involved with major labels and thus the RIAA, I'd look into boycotting their music entirely. That Radiohead did what they did outside the confines of a major label was pretty ballsy. Plus, it looks like they made a lot of money, too--1.2 million downloads in the first day or two, with the average donated amount coming in at around $8.50 a person.

This is a huge deal for me, especially considering what I was always told in music school: when you sign, labels give you a big chunk of money to live off of, and you have to pay it back with the insignificant 12% royalty you agreed to in the contract. Essentially, you don't really profit from this system unless you either sell an unbelievable amount of albums, or invest all of the advance money and find a way to get yourself dropped from the label. It's also pretty well known that majors are sustained by their biggest sellers, and if Radiohead can be successful selling albums on their own, maybe some of the other big acts can be successful as well. I am hopeful for this because I like the idea of being able to bend the rules of the game once you've played it well enough.

As far as how I like the album itself, I've only really listened to it twice, so I'm not going to make any judgments. The one that sticks out to me so far is 'Weird Fish/Arpeggi.' I'm also kind of into 'Videotape' although I hear it is not quite up to the live version.