Michael St. Clair

http://www.patandkat.com/pat/weblog/.../19/003750.php



I take Radiohead's side on this one...while they obviously can't control how you listen, they should certainly have a say in how their music is sold.

Jeff Keene

Michael -

I agree. They put effort into making albums, as opposed to collections of songs, and I for one appreciate it. Would you buy only selected chapters of a movie (I mean besides Episode 1)??

Angelo.M

Eric Peterson

That's kind of funny really.

Does he think that Radiohead is the first band that hates singles?

There have been a lot of artists over the years that have avoided singles, and generally it has a negative impact on the amount of money that they can make, so this is not "For Money".

Anyway, I'm with Radiohead all the way on this. For the life of me, I still can't understand why you would want to download singles anyway. How do people store these permanently? It seems like these people just want to listen to them while they're popular and don't care about their harddrive crashing.

I got a little off track there.

"Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award."
Billy Wilder

"This business has come a long way in the last 30 years, but why should I depress you"
I.A.L. Diamond on the Movie Business (1986)

Rich Malloy

It's simply a different POV from one that presumes music, even popular music, to be art. These folks equate music with widjits, just another product in the consumerist buffet. They prefer their Mona Lisa with a big toothy grin, and how do you presume to deny them their choice?

I believe it was Woody Allen who commented on the use of focus groups by movie studios, essentially wondering why he should trust the opinion of randomly selected persons-on-the-street as opposed to an actual director of motion pictures. After all, good film or bad, one suspects the director was hired precisely because he knows one or two things about making a good movie that's beyond the knowledge of a grip, gaffer, sound technician, or indeed a randomly selected person-on-the-street.*

*(Excepting, of course, McG.)

All part of the great leveling, I suppose. Art has become so devalued as to be indistinguishable from mere entertainment, having become nothing more than "product" churned out by one of three multinational conglomerates for the appeasement of the masses. Peg everything to the lowest common denominator, make it available in easily-digestible slices, and cross-promote it on the Today Show with a tie-in to the latest contrived scandal conceived and executed by the PR people. It's all about moving stock and pandering to the sleepwalking consumerist mentality.

So, if Britney, then why not Radiohead? The great unwashed surely think Thom Yorke would do better for himself by competing for their democratic approval on "International Idol". After all, in this day and age, who really believes that Thom Yorke understands his music better than "enraged fan"? And who contends he has any more right to his own creation than does "random person-on-the-street"?

At the very least, he could have started out as a Mouseketeer and worked his way up the corporate ladder like a good doobie.

\"Only one is a wanderer;
Two together are always going somewhere.\"

Mike Broadman

Nice rant, dude.

My awesome music collection

BrianB

CD Burners.

I presume Radiohead do not allow radio stations to play any tracks from their albums, and do not issue singles from their albums.

I noticed EMI forced Walmart to pull tracks from KidA as Radiohead only want it sold as an album, yet singles from that album are available.

A quick look at a Radiohead discography online suggest there's no real shortage of Radiohead singles in the UK. I'm sure there's an element of contractual obligations involved, but still...

I'm all for artists to have the rights on how/where their music is sold, and I'm all for music as art, but a bit of consistency would be nice.

high resolution ipod featuring dlp hd programming is the best, almost as good as playstation 2 with wega windows media on a super cd! ps2 and tivo do dolby tv with broadband hdtv!

Mike Broadman

Radiohead has always had singles on the radio in the US.

My understanding is just that they don't want singles to be downloaded.

My awesome music collection

Eric Peterson

I know what a CD burner is. I use one daily, but the idea of storing music in a library of random CDRs sounds so depressing to me, that I wouldn't even consider it.

"Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award."
Billy Wilder

"This business has come a long way in the last 30 years, but why should I depress you"
I.A.L. Diamond on the Movie Business (1986)

BrianB

So they're happy (and I suspect they aren't, but are contractally obliged) to sell the tracks in the form of a single, but you can't download same track (even if you want to pay for the privilege). Right?

high resolution ipod featuring dlp hd programming is the best, almost as good as playstation 2 with wega windows media on a super cd! ps2 and tivo do dolby tv with broadband hdtv!

Michael St. Clair

It would certainly be a bit more consistent if you could buy the released singles as individual tracks online. That's not the same as being able to buy every album track individually.

If they are opposed to singles, they shouldn't release CD singles (which are a much bigger market in the UK than here these days).