Official RADIOHEAD thread

[Chest Rockwell]

and then can you guys reveal your secret as to how you get tickets for more than one show let alone one of them?

Not that I was serious, but I probably couldn't even afford more than one ticket.

[squints]

It Worked! Radiohead Finds Sales, Even After Downloads

By JEFF LEEDS, nytimes.com
Published: January 10, 2008

LOS ANGELES — In a twist for the music industry's digital revolution, "In Rainbows," the new Radiohead album that attracted wide attention when it was made available three months ago as a digital download for whatever price fans chose to pay, ranked as the top-selling album in the country this week after the CD version hit record shops and other retailers.

The album, the first in four years from the closely watched British rock act, sold 122,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That represents a mixed result for the band. It's a sharp drop compared with the debut of Radiohead's previous album, 2003's "Hail to the Thief," but it's far from a flop, considering the steep decline in music sales in the last four years and the typically weak sales in the post-Christmas period. "Thief" sold about 300,000 in its first week in 2003.

In any case the figures challenge the conventional wisdom that music fans no longer have an affinity for plastic. The sales of the album, which also snagged the top spot on the British weekly music chart, came despite the fact that "In Rainbows" — in the form of digital files — had been acquired by many fans after the band offered it in an unconventional pay-what-you-want offering through a Web site, inrainbows.com. The album was released on plastic CDs and vinyl LPs on Jan. 1, with the CD priced at $13.98, though it could be found for as little as $7.99 at outlets like Amazon.com.

Some retailers viewed the Radiohead figures as a sign of the continuing market for so-called physical products in the music business, where the popularity of iTunes, music blogs and other sites have made the digital file appear to be the coin of the realm. In particular they said even fans who received the digital files distributed by Radiohead may have decided to pay for the better audio quality versions on CD or LP.

"Having a physical, archival high-fidelity master recording that you can side-load into your MP3 player of choice for a similar price is significantly better than just purchasing zeros and ones," said Eric Levin, owner of the independent record shop Criminal Records in Atlanta and founder of an 18-member alliance of independent retailers. "I feel like that's what 75 percent of the people are saying."

Mr. Levin said that at his store vinyl copies of "In Rainbows" outsold the CD by a wide margin. Demand for the album was such that some record shops put it on sale before the label's planned "street date," resulting in sales of about 9,000 copies the previous week.

But sales of the plastic and vinyl versions of the album also received a boost from digital services like iTunes, where the album sold about 28,000 copies. The iTunes service, which sells individual songs for 99 cents and albums typically for $9.99, had not carried any of the band's previous albums, owing in part to Radiohead's demand that its recordings be sold only as complete works.

But Bryce Edge, one of Radiohead's managers, said the band decided to sell "In Rainbows" on iTunes because it expects that EMI, the British music giant that released the band's first six albums, will soon post them for sale on the service, and it would be strange for the new album to be excluded. An EMI representative declined to comment.

The decision to release the music as a digital file so far in advance of the CD also allowed time for the music to circulate on free, unlicensed file-swapping networks. Big Champagne, a tracking service that studies file-sharing, estimates that the album was downloaded more than 100,000 times on free networks in the first 24 hours after Radiohead delivered it to fans who had preordered it from its Web site. But Eric Garland, chief executive of Big Champagne, said that by offering the music for as little as zero from their own site, Radiohead "stole market share" from pirate networks.

Mr. Edge said that sales of 100,000 copies of the album this week would be "almost certainly less than the number we would have achieved if we hadn't" offered it as a digital download. But the band still came out ahead, he said, in part because it attracted so many fans to Radiohead's Web site, where it collected e-mail addresses from fans looking to acquire the album.

The band has not said how many copies it distributed. Now that the CD is in shops, some fans who paid for the initial downloads may have been tempted to buy the album, in effect, for a second time. But Steve Gottlieb, chief of the independent label TVT Records, said he believed the sales mainly reflected fans who were acquiring the music for the first time.

"Radiohead is one of those really big groups that appeals to people outside the intensely pirating demographic of 16 to 29," he said. "To the extent Radiohead still has a significant audience in its 30s and 40s, there's a bigger audience of those people who will still pick up something at Best Buy or don't want to bother with figuring out how to go to a Radiohead Web site and track it down."

Still, Mr. Gottlieb said, the sales suggested that the band's name-your-price offering, and fans' subsequent free sharing of files, had taken a toll. "Clearly we can't give it all away and expect to sell CDs," he said.

But Radiohead will have yet more opportunities to gain fans. The band said yesterday that it planned to perform in more than 20 North American cities this year.

[MacGuffin]

Source: MTV

Radiohead's latest webcast is drawing a little too much attention. The band planned to play a short set of In Rainbows songs at a store in London on Wednesday and film the performance for webcast on Radiohead.tv. But due to high demand, the performance was moved to 93 Feet East, a proper live-music venue. "On the advice of the police and the local council, it was decided to change the venue to the larger one in the interests of public safety and due to the size of the crowd that turned up for the event," the band said on the Dead Air Space portion of its Web site. "Rough Trade and the band apologise for any inconvenience caused."

[tpfkabi]

yeah, it was fun. since they used windows media instead of quicktime (like usual) i was able to stream it at work.

i hope they spice up the live sets though - as far as song selection. i think they've played YAWA and TNA at just about every gig for the last few years.

[tpfkabi]

paste magazine is trying the same kind of thing - you can pick your subscription price, minimum of $1............so i took them up on it.

did you actually get anything? because I didn't ;(

nor i... ;;((

did everyone get their's? i've gotten two issues now.

EMI......I don't know what to think. I'm really wondering what this tracklisting will be...

EMI are set to release a Radiohead Greatest Hits album to coincide with Radiohead's upcoming tour. Radiohead's former label seem determined to make some money from the band's current activities.

When Radiohead announced the release of their 'In Rainbows' Discbox in December, EMI quickly followed with the release of the 7 albums (6 studio, 1 live) as a box set which included the albums as digipacks, download and USB-stick.

Now the tour is coming up (North American dates are expected to be announced next week), EMI have got another release up their sleeves; the long feared Greatest Hits album. Ed  O'Brien told Strombo [laughing]: "They're planning to do a Greatest Hits for April, May to coincide with our tour. That's an interesting one. We won't be doing any promotion for that, obviously."

In an interview with Analogue, Phil Selway quickly commented on a Greatest Hits album as well: "It's well within their rights to do it. [sigh]. So we'll have to see."

[MacGuffin]

Radiohead Hitting the Road

Radiohead is chasing Rainbows with its first North American tour in two years.

The band announced Tuesday that it will kick off an eight-concert trek May 5 in West Palm Beach, Florida, continuing on to locales including Tampa, Atlanta and Houston before wrapping up in Dallas on May 18. Tickets to the shows go on sale Saturday, with presale beginning Thursday.

From there, the British rockers will head back across the pond for the European leg of their tour, kicking off June 6 in Dublin and wrapping up July 8 in Berlin.

Radiohead is then due to return to the U.S. in August for the second leg of the North American tour, with dates and venues yet to be announced. Among the cities on the band's itinerary are Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.

The alt-rock group released its latest album, In Rainbows, online in October as part of an experiment that allowed fans to name their own price. Reports placed the number of downloads at over 1 million.

The album has since been rereleased in a more traditional CD format, with the band going on to sell an additional 311,000 copies, per Nielsen SoundScan.

Meanwhile, Radiohead's former record label EMI is planning to capitalize on the rockers' upcoming tour by releasing a greatest-hits album of their work this spring, according to published reports.

The band members have made it clear that the album is being released without their support and that they will have nothing to do with promoting it.

http://www.radiohead.com/tourdates/

[tpfkabi]

ticket prices seem to have gone up since the HTTT tour.
i think the prices were around 35-45 back then.
dallas = 59.50
houston = 65

in fairness, i noticed all the other concerts listed were more except for Avril Lavigne's (we're talking people like roger waters and tom petty).

[tpfkabi]

i did not snag any tics through waste, though i woke up twice early in the middle of the night to check...

[NEON MERCURY]

my fiance and i will be at the charlotte show.   

[tpfkabi]

i won't be going to dallas or houston - unless some miracle happens.

and yes, i was at ticketmaster exactly when they went on sale, choose Pit tickets at both venues, was put on a 10 minute wait and got neither.

i may have damned myself by having two TM windows opened simultaneously though - they may have some preventative measures against this to combat scalpers.

there are 3 pages of Dallas tics alone on ebay though...

[RegularKarate]

I got Houston tickets... just have to deal with Lawn... last time I got seats, but I guess I'm lawning it this time around... oh well, at least I get to go.

[tpfkabi]

they had Dallas Lawn tics even at 10pm later that day, i just did not want to pay $50 bucks (after the $9.10 convenience charge) to be that far away.

[MacGuffin]

Radiohead allows fans to remix new single

Radiohead is using the Internet for another initiative built around its chart-topping album, "In Rainbows."

The UK rock act has teamed with iTunes and GarageBand for an interactive project that allows fans to rework the album's second single, "Nude."

Wannabe remixers can buy five separate tracks from the recording -- bass, voice, guitar, strings/effects and drums -- from iTunes Plus. On purchasing all five elements, the customer will be sent an access code to complete the task via the GarageBand or Logic music production software.

Finished mixes can be uploaded to Radioheadremix.com, where fans have until May 1 to listen and vote for their favorite. Bedroom remixers can also create a widget for their personal Web profile that will tally votes toward the competition.

"In Rainbows" was initially released on the Internet last year, with the band allowing fans to download the album for whatever price they chose. The CD version hit stores earlier this year, debuting at No. 1 on the U.S. and UK charts.

[bigperm]

my attempt, i have  second one i'm gonna post later, all in fun

http://www.radioheadremix.com/remix/?rated=true&id=599

main, some good ones up there
http://www.radioheadremix.com/

[tpfkabi]

NIN kinda stole their idea and then they stole the NIN remix idea.

i was glad to see that Best Of had tracks like Let Down, Talk Show Host and Idioteque (at least i think all of those are in the 2 disc edition). unless the price is really low, they might as well buy the actually albums.

that would be weird to hear some of those tracks that have transitions between the next songs paired with different songs. i guess they'll just fade it out.