back to article Radiohead goes out on a limb with 'newspaper album'

Radiohead have declared their new album The King Of Limbs will be available for fans to download for between £6 and £9 depending on the format from Saturday 19 February. Separately, the Oxford group, whose last studio effort In Rainbows was released in 2007, will spin out what Radiohead have described as a "newspaper album". …

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  1. Alan Douglas

    Correction

    In fact, the minimum payment to download the In Rainbows album was 0p, not 1p, and in this case the processing charge did not apply.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    Hold on....

    I don't like RH very much, but hold on! The WAV downloads are going to be around 10x the size of the MP3 so they need a covering charge, upstream bandwidth is not cheap.

  3. lglethal Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    Umm you should read the press release better Kelly

    If you had read the press release you would have seen that the box set comes with the online download so No, it is not asking fans to pay twice, the cost of the digital download is included in the box set. Which means that your actually only paying approx 24 pound for the vinyls, physical CD and a big book of Radiohead art. Personally thats a price im willing to pay...

    Oh and im not quite sure how you can class 320k MP3's as crappy. If you can tell the difference between 320k mp3 and wav you either own a €100,000 audio setup or your talking bollocks...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Grenade

      Umm you should have paid more attention in your maths (and english) lessons

      "it is not asking fans to pay twice"

      "your [sic] actually only paying approx 24 pound for the vinyls, physical CD and a big book of Radiohead art"

      I may be wrong, but paying £24 for the CD etc. without the downloads isn't an option.

      So by your logic you are paying £24 for a CD, some obsolete bits of vinyl and a book, plus £6 for a download. I think that might be interpreted as 'asking fans to pay twice'.

      1. Kelly Fiveash (Written by Reg staff)

        Re: Umm you should have paid more attention in your maths (and english) lessons

        As my story makes clear, Radiohead are indeed asking fans to pay twice. First for the digital format, and second for the 'physical' version. But yes, if a fan buys the .wav or .mp3 formats first, they obviously won't be paying for the digital download twice when they lay out cash for the 'newspaper album', so that charge is rightly trimmed off the 30 quid price tag. However, they will still be paying for another format, which is a classic biz model employed by big name record companies since (disc spinning) time begun.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          No

          You can buy the music.

          Or you can buy the music and a cheap Stanley Donwood.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Badgers

        Well done Kelly!

        For disproving that age old myth that journalists cannot admit that they were wrong...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      mp3 = 320kps?

      If it was 320kps I would buy it. In Rainbows was only available at 160kps and sounded shite.

      1. CloudDog23
        Happy

        mp3 = 320kps? - You're in luck

        Get ready to get the creidt card / paypal account out, the MP3s are 320kps!

        Phew for a minute there, they nearly lost a sale.

      2. luxor
        FAIL

        Stating the obvious but...

        It's Radiohead it's supposed to be shite.

  4. RachelG
    Boffin

    No need to pay twice...

    If you *read* the page you link to, you'll see that if you pre-buy the 'newspaper' format, you also get access to the downloads on release day.

  5. Neil 6
    Dead Vulture

    Did you even look at the website?

    http://www.thekingoflimbs.com/DIGBP.htm

    If you pay £30 for the newspaper album it includes the MP3 or WAV download

    So they are not asking for you to pay for it twice.

  6. Jack 12

    Second Correction

    They are not trying to get you to pay twice for the same album, you can order the "newspaper" format at £30 for the physical + MP3, or £33 for the physical + WAV, you don't have to spend your £6 or £9 immediately to get the digital files and then another £30 on top of that for the vinyls and CD.

    1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

      I'm getting seriously confused

      You get a CD and for extra £3.- you get to D/L a WAV (presumably LPCM) but the LPCM stream is already on the CD in the first place and it will take less time and effort to copy it from the CD with your favorite ripper than to download...

      On the other hand if you don't pay the extra £3.- you have the right to D/L an MP3 and the LPCM stream on the CD, so by paying less you are getting an extra (though pretty worthless, as you can just as easily make your own MP3 from the CD but, hey, someone's already done it for you, so why not?) "product".

      1. Jack 12

        Hopefully to de-confuse

        It will take less time and effort to copy from CD than to download, but you get to download it on Saturday whereas the physical format is shipped in May sometime, so unless you have the world's worst internet connection, it makes much more sense to download. Not that i think the extra £3 is worth it for the WAV upfront because as you say, the LPCM stream will be on the CD.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Or....

    ...buy the CD from Tesco's bargain bin for 50p two weeks after release.

  8. schnide

    Yes, but.

    Oh, the cynicism! Like it or not, Radiohead have been one of the most experimental bodies - be it band or label - when it comes to distributing music since the internet so greatly changed the old model.

    1. Cazzo Enorme

      Re: Yes, but.

      At least they're being experimental with distribution. Shame they can experiment a bit with the music, and get away from the tedious sixth form indie stuff.

    2. Mechman

      (untitled)

      They're "one of the most experimental" for copying another band that did it 2 years earlier?

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_By_Little...

      1. TheProf
        Stop

        Hands up

        Hands up everyone who has heard of 'Harvey Danger'.

        1.......2.......2½, call it 3.

      2. Willington

        Re: (untitled) - Mechman

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_By_Little

        It's interesting that one of the tracks on The King of Limbs is called "Little by Little".

        I think the "experimental" tag comes from their music rather than any gimmicks, after all, people have been giving music away for years before there was any such thing as torrents. Remember Komakino by Joy Division?

  9. Jord
    Thumb Up

    Newspaper Album

    May be a reference to a joke made by Jimmy Carr, something along the lines of Radiohead planning to give away their next album with the Mail on Sunday (I think this was a twatter comment).

    £30 may sound a lot, but as it's been over 3 years since the last one, and considering all you get (2 clear vinyl records, CD, digital download, large artwork and 625 pieces of 'tiny' artwork), I think it's well worth it.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Dear Radiohead...

    ...how about I give you £10 and you give me a CD?

    1. Jord

      I Suspect

      They will probably do this a few months after the digital/ mail order release (they did it with InRainbows).

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Grenade

      Would you like...

      some hay for you cart-horse while we're at it?

      1. breakfast Silver badge
        Go

        Funny you should mention it...

        Hay is really expensive this winter because yields were very low last year and carthorses eat a whole lot of it. So hold the CD and I'll just take the hay.

    3. Jerome 0

      Dear AC...

      ...how about you give them £9 and burn your own CD?

  11. Magnus_Pym

    Clear Vinyl....

    ... I remember that from the 70's. That's the stuff that wears out almost instantly if you try to play it.

    1. Dale Richards
      FAIL

      Yep

      I probably wouldn't mind paying £30 if it was 12" heavyweight black virgin vinyl, but this 10" clear crap is just a gimmick. Am I the only one who still buys vinyl with the intention of actually playing it?

  12. blofse
    Happy

    Vinyl is better now...

    ...so don't worry about that. They seemed to have sorted the crackling out too - which is nice.

    OMG a new Radiohead album - woo! At lest this one only took 3 years rather than the previous 4.5....

    And it's this week! Hurrah!

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    This only works...

    ...if Radiohead were any good anymore.

    They kinda slowly disappeared up their own arses after The Bends, so I lost interest.

    A fancy way of packaging won't mean jack unless it's worth listening to in the first place.

    What? The door's this way? Ta..

    1. schnide
      WTF?

      Yes, you are right.

      I mean, what did they do after The Bends?

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_Computer#Reception

  14. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
    Stop

    @ mp3 = 320kps?

    The fact that it sounded shite was nothing to do with it being encoded at just 160Kps.

    It sounded shite because the whole album was nothing more than the sound of a once great band running out of ideas and crawling slowly up their own backsides. I did download it, and I paid a good sum for it too. It's just a shame that they refused to offer me my money back when I offered to upload it back to their servers.

    No offence you Radiohead drones. It's just my personal opinion. It's always interesting to see what Radiohead are doing, but in reality they've done nothing decent since Kid A.

    1. schnide
      FAIL

      And again..

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Rainbows#Critical_reception

      1. MadonnaC
        WTF?

        So?

        and just because you and/or some critics liked it, everyone should bow down, and crawl on hands and knees to their local record store, and buy every copy available as penance?

        1. schnide

          Not at all.

          But please take the argument to a ridiculous extreme if you must anyway.

  15. Stevie

    Bah!

    Clear vinyl? A sad mistake.

    Faust tried this gimmick back in the early seventies. The Polydor achieved the effect by omitting the black "filler" from the standard formula according to the press releases of the time. The only problem was that the resulting clear vinyl was very much softer as a result and the pressings wore out very quickly and scratched easily too, a problem because the transparent sleeve and lyric sheet the album came with were made of plastic and tended to scratch the album whenever the chance presented itself. .

    Within a couple of years Polydor was putting out the disc as a regular black record in a white card sleeve with a paper lyric sheet.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wot, no FLAC?

    Ahhh, that's right- no point trying to approximate white noise to a sum of sine waves.

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