Official RADIOHEAD thread

Started by Duck Sauce, January 11, 2003, 05:54:58 PM

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Stefen

Quote from: cronopio on October 10, 2007, 11:49:55 PM
your av is fucking hilarious , sparrow.



Yeah it is. I saw it earlier today on some music website (pitchfork? stereogum?). I about died laughing.

Rolling Stone has their review up already. They gave it 4 1/2 out of 5. Not bad at all. I had lost all faith in them when they rated the new Beirut and Fiery Furnaces albums 2 1/2 (basically a 5 out of 10) and called them mediocre while their 2 of my favorite albums of the year. They gained a shred of credibility back.

EDIT: HAHAHA This is the best cover (so far)



HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.
Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

Ravi

Quote from: matt35mm on October 10, 2007, 01:23:04 AM
It's true that it would be nice if it was less compressed.  Usually I don't care very much, but this album would really use those high highs and low lows.

Do you mean they squashed the dynamics?  That's a common problem with CDs these days.

Stefen

Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

matt35mm

Quote from: Ravi on October 11, 2007, 12:03:17 AM
Quote from: matt35mm on October 10, 2007, 01:23:04 AM
It's true that it would be nice if it was less compressed.  Usually I don't care very much, but this album would really use those high highs and low lows.

Do you mean they squashed the dynamics?  That's a common problem with CDs these days.

Perhaps.  I am not attuned enough (or my equipment isn't good enough) for me to tell any lack of quality on a CD.  But it's all further, and more noticably, squashed when it's compressed to 160 kbps.

MacGuffin

Is Radiohead's experiment a profitable one?
Customers have set their own prices for the bands self-released, downloadable album, some less than $10.
By Todd Martens, Los Angeles Times 

LAST week, a federal jury in Minneapolis slapped 30-year-old single mom Jammie Thomas with $222,000 in damages, ruling that she illegally shared music over the Internet. Apparently there wasn't any Radiohead on her hard drive.

Late Tuesday -- at sometime around 10:30 p.m. Pacific -- one of the biggest rock bands in the world unleashed its new album, "In Rainbows," to the Web. Payment was on a purely voluntary basis, as the British band began taking preorders for the album Oct. 1, allowing fans to set the price, or pay nothing at all. Those who preordered were then sent a link to download the album.
 
Chicago-based webzine Pitchforkmedia.com posted a news item that the album was available shortly after midnight. Radiohead's publicist Steve Martin said fans should have received their e-mail based on when orders were placed -- not how much they paid -- but the album was widely available early on, even to those in back of the queue, as almost immediately message boards around the Web lighted up with links to nonofficial sites hosting "In Rainbows."

Unlike the glitches that bogged down the band's website during the first day or two of preorders, there have been no reports of any widespread website failures in downloading the album. Fans seemed instantly thrilled with the more direct guitar sound of the album, and those who weren't took solace in the fact that they set the price.

"This was worth 2.50 pounds" (about $5 U.S.), wrote one poster on the message board for American Public Media's rock 'n' roll talk show "Sound Opinions."

It appears the only losers in this model are old-school retailers. "It's definitely scary for someone like me, who has been making his money off of this business," said Josh Madell, co-owner of New York's Other Music, which does have a download store. "But I also think it's an exciting time . . . . I think it's clear downloading music will be the main way people get their music in the future, but everything else is up in the air."

Britain-based webzine Record of the Day has been conducting a poll to see how much fans paid for the album. Managing director Paul Scaife reports more than 4,000 have voted, and while 5 and 10 British pounds ($10 to $20 U.S.) appear to be the popular price points, more than 2,800 claimed to have paid less than $10.

Courtyard Management, which represents the band, was unavailable for comment, and Martin had no initial sales information. That information has not been submitted to Nielsen SoundScan, so the album will not appear on next week's U.S. pop chart.

But the industry is already abuzz about which other acts will follow Radiohead's move. Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor posted on his official site this week that he is a free agent, and many expect him to follow Radiohead's model, based on his recent comments at an Australian concert authorizing fans to "steal" his music. London's Daily Telegraph reported Tuesday that Oasis and Jamiroquai are expected to follow in Radiohead's footsteps.

"We saw this coming a few years back and knew that at some point artists were going to be in a situation where they're running their own record labels," said Flaming Lips manager Scott Booker, a co-owner in the World's Fair management firm and record label. "Whether it's digital or physical releases, artists still need a certain amount of machination to let the world know the release exists. That's kind of what Radiohead is doing, and what NIN is doing. As bands get out of their contracts, chances are they won't be signing to another major."

Indeed, the Flaming Lips have one album left on a contract with Warner Bros., a release Booker says will likely be issued in 2009. And after that?

"In an ideal world," Booker said, "we want a way to have more control and rights over our material, and a healthy relationship with a label like Warners, [which has] our back catalog in perpetuity. We just realize we're in a different position when our next record is finished than when we originally signed. We're open to working with them, but it will be a drastically different deal."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FIRST IMPRESSION / "In Rainbows"
Radiohead's new album is surprisingly joyful
Radiohead released its new album via the Web on Oct. 10.
By Ann Powers, Los Angeles Times

Pop's latest moon landing happened Tuesday around midnight Pacific time, when the download code for Radiohead's "In Rainbows" hit inboxes around the world. The English band startled the music industry when it announced this release 10 days ago, inspiring much debate about record pricing and the fate of major labels in light of artists taking complete control of their careers. That story is a fascinating one, still unfolding. But there's also the matter of the music itself.

By scheduling a mass download -- really a rolling download, across time zones -- Radiohead has created a communal listening experience like no other in pop history. It typifies the Internet Age, in which people sit in physical isolation, linked through the ether by blogs and message boards. Instant reviews began appearing last night and will flow on through the day as people carve out time for listening. In that spirit, I've documented my own first listening experience, hiccups and all.
 
6:55 a.m.: Radiohead has a way of making me feel inadequate. They're so serious, so progressive, so cool. Do I really get them? I awaken from a dream in which I am onstage but can't remember the words to the song I'm singing. Anxiety! What if this download doesn't work and I'm the only pop snob out there who can't hear "In Rainbows" today? I could just stay in bed . . .

7:20 a.m.: Knowing that the download link for "In Rainbows" is probably sitting in my inbox, I rush my daughter through her toast and chocolate milk and get her into the car seat so Dad can drive her to school. I have to get to that inbox. Art trumps life today.

8:12 a.m.: Inbox open. There's the link. Arrived last night after bedtime. Darn! That means a horde of college kids and child-free media professionals have already had their communal Radiohead experience. Oh well. I'm having the working-mom communal Radiohead experience, I guess. I paste the link into my browser.

8:13 a.m.: Something is happening. Appears to be a download.

8:17 a.m.: Download complete. Wow, that went well. I hardly had time to be tempted to go on a blog search of already-posted reviews.

8:18 a.m.: I open the file. I can see 10 song titles, including "Nude," "Weird Fishes / Arpeggi," "Reckoner" and "Videotape."

8:19 a.m.: Headphones? Computer speakers? Speakers.

[There's a break in the space-time continuum to allow for getting coffee.]

8:28 a.m.: First track: "15 Step." Starts with live drums mixed with a handclap beat and Thom Yorke singing, in a surprisingly soulful voice, "How come I end up where I started?" Valid question, if where he started was in a future-thinking, Prince-inspired R&B band. Jonny Greenwood's letting forth a snaky little chord progression. Hold on. There come the weird sonic effects. One sounds like shuffling cards.

8:31 a.m.: A Jonny Greenwood effects buzz causes one of my speakers to fall off the shelf. Headphones? No, stay with speakers. Churchy organ ends the track.

8:33 a.m.: Second track: "Bodysnatchers." Is this a rewrite of the Beatles' "Within You Without You"? They are having fun here!

8:35 a.m.: Whoa, that echo chamber guitar and Yorke singing "It's the 20th century" sure sounds like U2. But harder-rocking. Not even slightly ponderous. Then, with a shout of "I seen it coming!" they're outta here.

8:37 a.m.: Track 3: "Nude." Surge of strings. Yorke's doing his helium-croon thing. Pretty! I love the way his voice and Greenwood's guitar are interacting on some of these tracks. Their Glimmer Twins-go-to-grad school artistic love affair appears intact.

8:40 a.m: Is that a Theremin or is Thom just really happy to be singing with his band again? The song ends with his falsetto hitting a peaceful, major-scale resolution.

8:42 a.m: Track 4: "Weird Fishes / Arpeggi." More bubbly guitar and two-step-style drumming, like the first track. This one's so palatable, so smooth, so . . . watery.

8:45 a.m.: The waters are getting muddy. Noisy buildup of guitar effects. Yorke: "I get eaten by the world and weird fishes." OK, now we're back in Radiohead world -- bliss and paranoia in equal parts.

8:47 a.m.: Isn't this supposed to be a communal listening experience? I decide to do a quick search on Google Blogs. " 'In Rainbows' is incredible, expansive, a voyage," writes one blogger. Now I feel connected to all the other early adapters. Time for Track 5.

8:52 a.m.: "All I Need." Cello and a trip-hop beat ushers in a fuzzy keyboard riff. Yorke's singing is unusually laid-back, though the lyrics intimate claustrophobia, panic. "I'm an animal trapped in your hot car." It ends with an ascending melody line and York singing, "It's all wrong, it's all right." Is this his idea of a love song?

8:57 a.m.: Track 6: "Faust Arp." Acoustic guitar and hushed, rapid singing evoke Elliott Smith. The strings seem lifted from Nick Drake's great second album, "Bryter Later." Oops, it's over. That was a short one.

8:59 a.m.: Track 7: "Reckoner." With a title like that, I expect a little clatter. The cymbal-driven opening does not disappoint. Yorke comes in at around a minute, gently keening, "You are not to blame . . . we are both to blame." The track surges, lulls, builds itself again in a wash of strings. I sneak a look at Google Blogs. "This is how the soundtrack to porn in the future will be," notes one instant review. OK then!
 
9:07 a.m.: Track 8: "House of Cards." Quiet as it is, this one has a funky undertone. Wait, did Yorke just sing, "I don't wanna be your friend, I just wanna be your lover"? He really has been listening to Prince.

9:08 a.m.: OK, it's becoming a Radiohead song. Greenwood is processing those Nick Drake strings so they sound like they've been recorded inside a space station. A little click in the corner of the mix actually sounds like cards shuffling. Now Yorke seems to be singing, "Denial, denial." Is that a cute little reference to Kurt Cobain? It was the key word in "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

9:11 a.m.: I'm thinking about ghosts now: Elliott Smith, Nick Drake, Kurt Cobain. They're all floating around in Radiohead's air. Maybe "In Rainbows" isn't as sweet and calm a trip as it first seems.

9:13 a.m.: Track 9: "Jigsaw Falling Into Place." Lacy, looping playing by Greenwood returns the band to its "OK Computer" sound. But Yorke's vocal, low in his range, makes me think of Damon Albarn from Blur. He also sounds a little drunk.

9:14 a.m.: Choogling guitar and kick drum move this track. "Dance, dance, dance," Yorke sings. But the track never gets too frantic and concludes neatly. This one could get airplay -- if Radiohead still cared about airplay.

9:19 a.m.: Track 10: "Videotape." It's the final one. I hear they've been playing this one live for a while. Piano-based, solemn, it's presented like a closing theme.

9:21 a.m.: Someone's breathing heavy on this track. Clacking effects and a sparsely repetitive structure make it more like "Kid A" than most of "In Rainbows." The lyrics speak of death: "When I'm at the pearly gates, this'll be on my videotape." A melancholy way to close an album that, in general, is surprisingly joyful.

9:25 a.m.: The listening event of the year has concluded, at least for me, for now. The warm glow of communal music geekiness engulfs me. Time to load the tracks on my MP3 player and live with them for a while. I think "In Rainbows" is going to turn out to be a great album. It's been a great 45 minutes so far.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

grand theft sparrow

From the Rolling Stone review:

QuoteAll of it rocks; none of it sounds like any other band on earth; it delivers an emotional punch that proves all other rock stars owe us an apology.

I wish Rolling Stone still was what it was 30 years ago, because then that statement would have as much weight as it deserves.

Pubrick

Quote from: Stefen on October 10, 2007, 11:55:34 PM
2 1/2 (basically a 5 out of 10)

yeah, if the original highest score was 5, and they got 2.5, then out of a huge number like TEN it would be 2.5 times 2!

wow, maths is AMAZING!
under the paving stones.

Stefen

Hey, euros, quids, pounds, dollars, etc. I was just being safe.
Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

tpfkabi

Quote from: matt35mm on October 11, 2007, 12:45:23 AM
Quote from: Ravi on October 11, 2007, 12:03:17 AM
Quote from: matt35mm on October 10, 2007, 01:23:04 AM
It's true that it would be nice if it was less compressed.  Usually I don't care very much, but this album would really use those high highs and low lows.

Do you mean they squashed the dynamics?  That's a common problem with CDs these days.

Perhaps.  I am not attuned enough (or my equipment isn't good enough) for me to tell any lack of quality on a CD.  But it's all further, and more noticably, squashed when it's compressed to 160 kbps.

starting with Amnesiac, to me their recordings have sounded very confined and sterile. i'm wondering if part is the 160 with In Rainbows - i've never done much research, i.e. listening to different sound files back to back - or if it's just mastering. also i think a lot of the guitars are recorded directly - meaning no amps or room sound is utilized. i've seen thom a time or two - in pics and in MPIE - tracking his guitars by the recording desk, so this is a viable assumption.
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

MacGuffin

Radiohead, Big Enough to Act Like a Baby Band 
By JON PARELES; New York Times

"It is the 21st century," Thom Yorke sings in "Bodysnatchers" on "In Rainbows," Radiohead's new album, and he goes on to add: "I'm alive." Wrenched way out of context — actually, the song is about a soul trapped within a zombie — that could be Radiohead's message to the recording companies that it has sidestepped.

Without a label or a fixed price, and not quantifying its sales for pop charts, "In Rainbows" is selling copies, being avidly played and making the world pay attention. That would happen under any circumstances: "In Rainbows" is Radiohead's first album since 2003, and on first hearings it's as bitterly magnificent as the band's best works, with barbed, intricate vamps wrapped around thoughts of death, love, futility, stubbornness and rage.

Many Radiohead fans have been listening to songs from "In Rainbows" for more than a year, since the band road-tested them on a 2006 tour and tolerates live bootlegs. On the album, far from taming the songs in the studio, Radiohead has burrowed into them, adding more moving parts to make them bleaker and jumpier.

But a big part of the initial attention comes from the fact that Radiohead didn't set a price for downloading "In Rainbows." Now that it has completed the major-label contract under which it sold millions of albums through EMI, Radiohead has become a cyber-cottage industry — through its merchandising company, W.A.S.T.E., named after Thomas Pynchon's underground postal system in "The Crying of Lot 49" — and it has customers pounding on its virtual door.

Some preordered the deluxe $80 package of two CDs (including a second album of additional tracks), two vinyl LPs and printed matter due in December. Some ordered the download version — just 10 medium-quality MP3 files without an album-cover image — for as little as a 90-cent credit-card charge, while others paid whatever they considered a fair price for the album. Radiohead isn't the first former major-label act to let fans decide what to pay; the Canadian songwriter Jane Siberry, who now calls herself Issa, did it years earler. But Radiohead is operating at a different order of magnitude. So many people responded to its quiet Web site announcement and rapidly multiplying word-of-Internet that Radiohead's server crashed on Oct. 1.

Radiohead's do-it-yourself, price-it-yourself model recognizes the new digital facts of life. Bluntly, listeners don't have to pay for recorded music: There are free versions online, as there are already of "In Rainbows," which was distributed without any attempt to thwart copying. The fact that fans have paid to get "In Rainbows" is a measure of their eagerness to keep Radiohead writing songs. And the deeper underlying reality is that fans have always set the value of music. They are the ones to decide, yes or no, to buy an album, a single or a concert ticket at the available price. Radiohead's digital-era flexibility allows more supporters to make themselves known.

Radiohead couldn't be in a better position to market itself online, without middlemen. It has a huge and loyal, if contentious, fan base that has sold out arena concerts for more than a decade. Unlike Prince, who chose to go independent at a much earlier, slower stage of the Internet, Radiohead can count on broadband access from much of the world. And by all anecdotal evidence, Radiohead has an overwhelming proportion of its fans online.

Sometimes it seems that most of the Internet bandwidth not occupied by spam and pornography is filled with bloggers obsessing over Radiohead's every cryptic lyric and musical aberration — or today complaining that the "In Rainbows" album online is not a full audiophile-quality file, which would be much larger and slower to download. (One frequent suggestion within the music business is to offer low-fi music free or inexpensively and higher-quality versions at full or premium prices, as Radiohead will do with its CD releases of "In Rainbows." But even at 160 kilobits per second (Kbps), "In Rainbows" is a sonic notch above the standard 128 Kbps iTunes download, and on a portable MP3 player through good earphones, it has plenty of detail.)

In some ways Radiohead now resembles what the music business calls a baby band. The Internet has equated, though not equalized, the least-known bands with the best-known independent ones. Like a zillion hopefuls with MySpace pages, Radiohead records and tours on its own budget and timetable, plays new songs before they're recorded, lets listeners hear its music with a click or two and sustains itself primarily through performing and direct sales. Of course, for a baby band, that generally means selling enough T-shirts to fill the gas tank in the van to get to the next club gig. Musical skills aside, Radiohead also has considerably more attention, fame and capital.

Clearly, Radiohead has benefited from a decade of EMI's promotion, publicity and retailing operations. The band's management has said that when "In Rainbows" is sold in stores, it will be distributed by a record company, which would already have relationships with pressing plants, warehouses and delivery trucks. Radiohead doesn't seek to reinvent that infrastructure.

Historically, middlemen are expensive. Under typical major-label contracts (which are likely to be different from whatever deal Radiohead makes for "In Rainbows"), musicians have paid handsomely for market access. The luckiest ones receive perhaps 15 percent of what their albums earn after a label's expenses are recouped — as opposed to the 100 percent of revenues that Radiohead is getting from "In Rainbows" online.

For a successful band a major-label contract also amounts to a kind of forced altruism. Profits from hits support not only fancy offices and executive salaries but also, and crucially, the flops, whether those are lame attempts to copy current radio fodder or a seminal baby band ahead of its time. Before music migrated online, an established band would generally decide that the major labels were the only game in town and use its clout to get a better major-label deal when it had the chance. Now, as contracts expire for well-known bands, they have more options as independents — and for major labels, there will be fewer sure things to subsidize newer acts. To compensate, maybe the newly independent superstars can link to baby-band Web pages or take them on tour as opening acts.

Free from its major-label contract, Radiohead could work on "In Rainbows" without deadlines or other pressures — which, fortunately, didn't make for happy-go-lucky music. Rhythmic layers crackle and coil, percussion spatters prettiness, and noise sometimes looms from murky corners. Yet "In Rainbows" uses fewer synthetic sounds than Radiohead albums like "Kid A" and "Hail to the Thief." Much of it comes across as fingers on strings and sticks on drums.

Radiohead has also reclaimed its tunefulness. Its new songs take care to string long-lined melodies across the rigorous counterpoint, whether the band is rocking through "Bodysnatchers" or meshing guitar-picking patterns with hip-hop drums and odd meters in "15 Step" and "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi." Good old Radiohead malaise fills the songs, as Mr. Yorke moans about writer's block in "Nude" — "Don't get any big ideas/They're not gonna happen" — or takes a grim view of relationships in "House of Cards," "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" and "All I Need," in which he intones, "I only stick with you because there are no others."

He can't be singing about the old-school music business because with "In Rainbows," Radiohead has decided to move on.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In Radiohead Price Plan, Some See a Movement
By JEFF LEEDS; New York Times

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 10 — It was, more or less, an accident.

The chief advisers to Radiohead, the Grammy-winning British rock act behind platinum albums like "OK Computer," were lounging around, having a "metaphysical" conversation about the value of music in the digital realm, when they struck upon the idea of simply releasing new music online and letting fans settle the matter themselves.

Initially, they viewed it as a way to let fans preview Radiohead's music without the guidance — or filter — of radio programmers, music critics or other conventional tastemakers.

Instead, when Radiohead quietly divulged plans to let fans name their price for the digital download of its new album, "In Rainbows," it incited talk of a revolution in the music industry, which has found the digital marketplace to be far less of a cash cow than it once dreamed. Though Radiohead is in a position that can't easily be replicated — it completed its long-term recording contract with the music giant EMI while retaining a big audience of obsessive fans — its move is being seen as a sign for aspiring 21st-century music stars.

"To put your record out for someone's individual perceived value is brilliant," said David Kahne, a longtime music producer who has collaborated with artists like Paul McCartney and Kelly Clarkson. While it presents obvious risks as a business model, he noted: "It's a spiritual model. That's what it feels like to me."

The Radiohead camp has been reluctant to add to the hype surrounding the album, which has been stoked by breathless blog posts and e-mail exchanges for the past week. Bryce Edge, who manages the band with Chris Hufford of Courtyard Management, stressed that the band's tip-jar-style tactic "is not a prescription for the industry."

But he acknowledged that it has punctuated a debate about the fair value of music that has accelerated in the last few months. Before Radiohead's superstar panhandle, Prince offered a free song through Verizon phones (and roughly three million free copies of his new album in a British newspaper). And Trent Reznor of the rock act Nine Inch Nails, which, like Radiohead, is effectively free from a record contract, recently encouraged concertgoers to simply "steal" the band's new album and "give it to all your friends."

Radiohead's move comes just as a federal jury in Minnesota last week decided that a mother found liable for copyright infringement for sharing music online should pay damages amounting to about $9,250 apiece for 24 songs.

Mr. Edge summed up the pricing pandemonium simply: "Digital technology has reintroduced the age of the troubadour. You are worth what people are prepared to give you in the digital age because they can get it for nothing."

In another departure from convention, the band declined to send out early copies of the music for reviewers and has not settled on a traditional single to push to radio stations. As a result, programmers are improvising. In San Francisco, for instance, the rock station KITS-FM, Live 105, has the entire album on its Web site (live105.com) and will let fans vote to determine which songs merit airplay.

"We just want to be involved in it," said Dave Numme, the station's program director. "We just want to reflect what's going on out there and give our listeners a chance to tell us what they think of it."

But the band is not departing from convention entirely with the new album. A boxed set that includes various extras is being sold on www.inrainbows.com for a set price of about $80. And Radiohead plans to release "In Rainbows" as an old-fashioned CD no later than January, though it has not determined if it will return to a major label to do so.

Radiohead completed its long-term contract with EMI with 2003's "Hail to the Thief," which sold roughly one million copies in the United States. The band will also tour next year.

"The final acid test," Mr. Edge said, "is come January, when the music has been available. Will there still be sufficient demand for a CD for us to feel that we've proved that making music available does not necessarily cannibalize CD sales?"

Various voices in and out of the industry have urged Radiohead to detail its "In Rainbows" sales data, but the band's managers declined to reveal them in an interview this week. It is not clear that the band will ever disclose how many copies of the digital album it has distributed or the average price paid, though Courtyard has been running an office pool on the results. But Radiohead's managers did dispute rumors that more people have bought the deluxe boxed set. And they added that most fans who have ordered the download have elected to pay something.

"The majority of the public are really decent human beings who are honest," Mr. Hufford said.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

tpfkabi

someone with deep iPod/iTunes knowledge please tell me - aren't iTunes mp4's, therefore a different type of sound file compression? if so, how are mp3/mp4 in comparison?
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

Neil

nude is a track i've been waiting for...mmmmm

how much have they made? did i miss that in any of the articles?
it's not the wrench, it's the plumber.

matt35mm

Quote from: bigideas on October 11, 2007, 11:27:43 AM
someone with deep iPod/iTunes knowledge please tell me - aren't iTunes mp4's, therefore a different type of sound file compression? if so, how are mp3/mp4 in comparison?

iTunes uses AAC compression, or m4a, which I guess has also been called mp4.  It is, supposedly, a better compression format than mp3. A 128 kbps m4a, according to Apple, is supposed to be comparable to a 160 or higher kbps mp3.

In my own tests, back when AAC was first introduced, I did find that m4a's were noticably better, just by a little.  The difference was less than, say, Dolby Digital and DTS, because DTS actually utilizes a higher bit rate.

Anyway, I'd call the Radiohead tracks about iTunes quality.  I also do now think that at least a little of what seems to be compression are just the way the tracks were mastered.  Yet, just by the fact that it's at 160 kbps, you know that the CD will have more information, and therefore a better rendered, more faithful sound.

MacGuffin

Quote from: Neil on October 11, 2007, 12:38:32 PMhow much have they made? did i miss that in any of the articles?

Quote from: MacGuffin on October 11, 2007, 11:08:43 AMVarious voices in and out of the industry have urged Radiohead to detail its "In Rainbows" sales data, but the band's managers declined to reveal them in an interview this week. It is not clear that the band will ever disclose how many copies of the digital album it has distributed or the average price paid, though Courtyard has been running an office pool on the results. But Radiohead's managers did dispute rumors that more people have bought the deluxe boxed set. And they added that most fans who have ordered the download have elected to pay something.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Stefen

9.0. And still climbing.

Okay, 9.1,
Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.