well said, Johnny.

No....wait. I don't have a reaction.

Carry on.

I take it that the forthcoming Smiths remasters will be released in the same way then, Johnny?

Wouldn't it be nice if everything went back to vinyl? You can't jam it into your computer's disc drive or burn it as easily. Plus you get larger artwork and the inner sleeve dealie. I frame some of mine I must admit.
Perhaps more artists should take that route and release vinyl only. Hell they can even partner with Technics/Numark/etc as sales for turntables would boom.
However, as things stand now, vinyl(esp. full length imports) happens to be very pricey. Another great example of the music industry shooting itself in the foot. Oh well...just a thought.

both in human nature and in commerce. There are few contracts as odious as record contracts, where the Talent may realize about 10% of their total sales. The industry is made up of middle-men and women, and the artists are little more than indentured servants.

Good for Radiohead - they are truly subverting the system. I am so curious to see how many people pay for this, and how many will freeload.

I must confess that a very good friend of mine burned me a copy of the disc first thing - I did not ask him to, he just did it. This guy is such a huge fan, he even has a RH tattoo. He paid for the download, and he will gladly pay $80.00 for the box set. Furthermore, he sees them whenever they play, multiple times, and he always pays for tickets. He felt no guilt burning me a copy, but he is one of the Faithful - a true Radiohead fanatic, who has been contributing to their revenue stream for years.

There is also a green innovation here - no paper, no vinyl, no disc. I'm old enough to miss that new-record smell, and the thrill of large, colorful graphics, and an object that you can physically cherish, but I'm all for cutting out the bean-counters and the waste, in any way possible.

The record sounds pretty damn good, by the way.

Last night, I read an article about Madonna dropping her record label and instead using the internet.

I considered the idea, slept on it, and then saw that maybe the internet's time has come for this sort of thing.

Before Madonna did this, you figure that she looked at her total album sales against the total internet downloads. Record contracts are really dismal about paying anything for downloads from what I recall. Sure, you can negotiate around it, but the tendency just a few years ago was to pay even less than what the artist would receive for the sale of a physical product. If the artist is selling more downloads than they are CD's, they aren't seeing much money. in record label terms, they are much further off from "recuperating" the advance the label gave them for making the album.

The article I read tried to point out the great things about record labels that an artist simply can't do on their own such as getting radio play. I don't really think Madonna and Radiohead were getting much airplay over the last few years. Sanctuary, likewise, didn't do much for promoting Morrissey's career outside of the internet fan base on this last album. Maybe it's like pushing a boulder up Mt. Everest to try and get a single on the radio, but Morrissey has appeared on the usual promotional avenues without a record company doing it, even if before ROTT came out he canceled all of the appearances the label set up for him and disappeared. I guess given a choice between what his label WOULD try to do for him and what he actually ends up doing on his own that he's no better off having a label (although I wish to God he would appear on a good late night TV show like Craig Ferguson's show. surely Moz could appreciate Craig's Prince Charles impersonation).

So, in the end, Radiohead charging whatever they want for an internet sale might either cause them to be financially no worse off than they would have been had they let a label release it at the very least or would allow them to realize more money than they would have seen period.