Radiohead debate the releaseof new album

Tue 21st Sep, 2010 in International News

Three years after the bombshell that was the ‘pay what you want’ revolution of In Rainbows, Radiohead has completed another set of songs they are ready to release to the world as their eighth studio album.

The exact means of this release however is unclear, as the band’s bassist Colin Greenwood has explained in an essay written for freedom of expression advocates Index of Censorship

Greenwood expresses his thoughts on the music industry and the anachronistic attitudes that exist towards digital media, commenting on the release on In Rainbows and the plans for the release of new Radiohead material.

He notes that when In Rainbows was released “various online pundits and pamphleteers were pronouncing the end of the record business, or of Radiohead, or of both. [But] for all the giddy prognostications, the most important reason for the success of In Rainbows was the quality of the music. I think this was overlooked, but without the great songs that we were proud of, the online release would have counted for nothing. I am optimistic that if you make good work you can secure the patronage of your fans.”

According to Greenwood, the band has “just finished another group of songs, and [has] begun to wonder about how to release them in a digital landscape that has changed again. It seems to have become harder to own music in the traditional way, on a physical object like a CD, and instead music appears the poor cousin of software, streamed or locked into a portable device like a phone or iPod. I buy hardly any CDs now and get my music from many different sources: Spotify, iTunes, blog playlists, podcasts, online streaming – reviewing this makes me realise that my appetite for music now is just as strong as when I was 13, and how dependent I am upon digital delivery.”

However Greenwood’s argument still holds a fond place for the role of record labels as curators: “I understand that we have become our own broadcasters and distributors, but I miss the editorialisation of music, the curatorial influences of people like John Peel or a good record label. I liked being on a record label that had us on it, along with Blur, the Beastie Boys and the Beatles.”

The full essay can be read on Index of Censorship