Radiohead

LP revival: Fact or fantasy?

I'm not sure why, but there's a never-ending stream of articles cheering on vinyl's comeback. I guess if it's a slow news day, editors can't resist plugging in yet another story about booming LP sales, and they always claim something along the lines of "Kids are digging the grooves, they've seen the light, and now crave analog sound!"

Puh-leeze!

Don't get me wrong; I wish it were true. Maybe in some alternative universe, vinyl is flying off the shelves, and kids are ditching their iPods and buying turntables.

Back here on the Earth we know and love, 2008 sales of LPs were up 89 percent, from 990,000 in '07 to 1.88 million in '08. That's hardly a boom, now that CD sales are in the hundreds of millions. The best-selling LP of 2008 was Radiohead's "In Rainbows," which sold a piddling 28,800 platters. Second-place honors went to another British band, The Beatles, which sold 16,500 "Abbey Road" LPs. If those numbers are accurate, and Radiohead's Thom Yorke and company were trying to live off LP sales, they'd have to get day jobs.

So sure, there's more and more new and reissue vinyl, and that's great, but only a teensy-weensy number of people buy new vinyl. Most of my vinyl-loving buddies regularly score free records on the street, or pay a buck or two for used vinyl to play on their megabucks high-end turntables. Again, no problem there, but it's not the same as a true vinyl resurgence. That's just media hype.

I love vinyl because it looks cool and sounds great. I own around 4,000 LPs. And I'm hoping that the vinyl revival keeps growing. But the market for physical media--CDs and LPs--has nowhere to go but down. More than anything else, people want cheap or free music, playable anywhere they want. … Read more

Radiohead, Beck, White Stripes live on DVD

I was never much of a fan of music videos or MTV. I couldn't understand why anyone would want to watch a band act out a silly story or lip-sync to a make-believe "performance." Why not just shoot the band playing for real in a studio?

The geniuses at IFC have done just that with Nigel Godrich's "From the Basement" series, which is now coming to DVD. There's an amazing roster of talent to see and hear.

High points include the White Stripes. Jack's wailing vocal acrobatics and scorching guitar riffs bouncing … Read more

Radiohead to play Grammys with marching band

I'm not a fan of the Grammy awards--I think they offer too many awards and give the big ones to too many has-beens or otherwise undeserving acts--but this year's show, scheduled for Sunday, sounds like the best in years. In particular, several blogs are posting rumors that Radiohead will be playing with the University of Southern California marching band, as Outkast did a few years back.

The rumors vary on song selection, but my bet's on "15 Step"--that electronic percussion intro would be perfect for a marching band drum corps. Add to that performances … Read more

Music sales for 2008 ride digital coattails

Digital music, long the bane of the music industry, may finally be something that record label executives can smile about.

For 2008, total music sales rose 10 percent to 1.51 billion units sold, up from 1.36 billion units the year before, according to industry tracker Nielsen. Units tallied include physical albums, digital albums and tracks, and music videos.

The biggest contributor to the growth was digital music, Nielsen reported. There were 1.07 billion digital tracks sold in 2008, up 27 percent from 2007, and there were 65.8 million digital albums sold, up 32 percent.

Those numbers … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 832: Kauai: one big digital converter box

In today's episode, Patrick Norton joins the gang for a rant-a-thon, IMDB turns 18, we're surprisingly not mad about the Android killswitch, Radiohead proves it made a winner with its digital album giveaway, and YouTube gives the Queen the giggles. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 832

IMDB turns 18 http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10067397-52.html

Android Market has a killswitch, but Google will refund your money if they use it http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/10/16/android-market-has-a.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10067543-16.html

HTC Dream T-Mobile G1 (black) http://reviews.cnet.com/htc-dream-t-mobile-g1/

FCC … Read more

Best of Outside Lands: Beck, Radiohead, Wilco...

If you didn't make it to the Outside Lands music festival in San Francisco last weekend (or you did and want to relive it), check out our free playlist and photo gallery below featuring some of the top acts. While everyone had their own unique experience, the climatic triple threat of Bon Iver, Broken Social Scene and Wilco on Sunday was my personal highlight. A common theme throughout the day was crowd participation (there were several occasions when the audience was invited to clap, sing, and scream along). From the reviews that I've read, and from general word-of-mouth buzz, the festival appeared to be a great success. Hopefully the artists and promoters feel the same way and will book a second annual Outside Lands next year!

Free playlist featuring Manu Chao, Radiohead, The Cool Kids, Nicole Atkins, Beck, The Walkmen and more:

Outside Lands photo gallery below courtesy of Ryan Salm - Ryansalmphotography.com

More photos...… Read more

Pay-what-you-like download site

When the history of the early 21st century is written, I'm afraid Radiohead will be included for pioneering a new business model rather than their groundbreaking music. Last year's digital-first release of In Rainbows allowed users to pay whatever they wanted for the download. Now there's an entire Web site devoted to pay-what-you-like: Aralie.com. It's a no-risk way for listeners to discover new music from independent bands.

It's also a no risk-way for independent musicians to get some exposure: it costs nothing to upload a song, there's no contract involved so you can … Read more

The 404 155: Where the studio is still standing

On the show today: Wilson and Justin do karaoke, box office and various weekend exploits, unhappy subway customers get irate, convicted pedophile sues American Express, and men's tights are the new metrosexual trend!

Hope you guys had a great weekend! Wilson, Linda, A-Rod, and a few other friends got our karaoke on at a place in KoreaTown on Friday! We had a blast singing all the hits; Wilson's going to kill me for telling you guys this, but that fool totally sang "Two Become One!" Trust me, you haven't lived a complete life until you'… Read more

Radiohead open sources more music on Google's Code site

Forget about your house of cards And I'll deal mine.

So sings Radiohead in its excellent "House of Cards" off the In Rainbows album, and so declares Radiohead with the open sourcing of the data behind its "House of Cards" video. How many bands do you know that have their own spot on Google's open-source code site? Radiohead does.

As The Guardian notes, the experiment is not without some difficulty (a bit like other open-source projects, ironically):

Google has also provided a handy visualiser to help you play around with the code, although, theoretically at least, you should be able to mashup the data on a range of video editing applications, including QuickTime Pro and the open-source VirtualDub. You should be able to use iMovie on the iPhone as well....

Early reports from the group, which launched on Monday, indicate that the data visualisation is tricky. Several users reported that the visualisation failed to work or was distorted. The less technically inclined can make do with a nifty desktop application that allows you to play around with a visualisation of Thom Yorke's head.

Yet another example of Radiohead pushing the mainstream music industry toward alternative ways to distribute and create music, and the media around it. The video's director, James Frost, captures this well:… Read more

Google: Hey, look, Radiohead's new video is cool and has lasers

Google has quite a bit in common with British rock band Radiohead: both have reputations for shattering corporate and artistic boundaries, both make constant headlines in the tech press regardless of what they do, and both will likely be seen as icons of early-21st-century futurism for years to come. (And both likely have some beef with record label EMI: Radiohead ditched the label to embark upon the high-seas adventure that is In Rainbows; Google lost chief information officer Douglas Merrill to EMI earlier this year.)

But it's still a surprise that Google, long known for keeping its hands out … Read more