JulianSimpson Still living. Still making falafal.

I decided a while ago that I was bored of writing regular blog entries and unless something weird happened to me or around me or in my head that it just isn’t worth writing about. My friend Derek commented the other day that he has the impression that all I’ve done for the last few months is eat egg salad sandwiches and brush my teeth with helmet on and I suppose that’s a fair if not somewhat inaccurate assessment. I suppose the biggest problem of late is that everything has been refreshingly normal. Not uneventful. Just not strange.

Me and Julie moved to Shaldon. It’s a small town/village in South Devon. Our house is right on the sea. Not literally. That would be a boat. We don’t live on a boat. It’s very much a house. Right now there is a large window in front of me. Beyond that is our patio and beyond that is the sea. It’s actually a river estuary across which is the bigger and far uglier town of Teignmouth. Shaldon has a butcher, a baker and a candlestick maker (seriously. I’m not makeing it up. They’re side by side by side though I think the candlestick maker is just what somebody named the house after realizing they were living beside a butcher and a baker. Both the butcher and the baker though are very real. I’ve purchased meat and baked goods from each respectively). There are about 5 pubs within stumbling distance. We did a bit of stumbling last night actually if I recall correctly.

The reason I started writing this is because I wanted to talk about radiohead. They did something interesting this week. They decided to give away their album in digital form for whatever you want to pay. $0.00 $100 and everything in between is the price you can pay to get their new album. The reason this is important is because it may mark a change in how music is distributed and the relationship between artist and listener. When they announced that they were releasing the album this way there was much internet fervor. I for one was really excited. Not only was there going to be a new Radiohead album sooner than anybody expected. It was going to turn the record industry on it’s ear and smash the stranglehold major lables have over musicians and listeners alike. I was going to be able to pay for music again knowing that my money was going directly to the artist. Radiohead were leading the charge into the new era of the music industry. Finally a David to stand up to Goliath.

Well not really.

They’re still releasing a physical cd. All indications are that they’ll be releasing it on a major label. One of the same majors that the media was reporting them to be bringing to their knees only a few days ago. I can’t help feeling a bit cheated. I paid £5 for my copy of the album. I’ve been looking forward to their new album for ages so on wednesday when I sat at my computer and decided on that amount I can’t recall how much of that 5 quid was for the music and how much of it was to help fund the revolution - a revolution, it turns out that they have no interest in.

Part of me wants to just hold on to the fact that Radiohead did something great in allowing me to pay for music again and feel good doing it knowing that my money was going directly to the artist. The fact is that it’s really really (fucking really) great album and it’s worth more than what I paid for it. That should be enough on it’s own. They were going to release a physical cd all along so this isn’t a new revelation it’s just one that wasn’t widely known. They did something that no band of their popularity or caliber has ever done. They gave their music away to fans for free or allowed them to pay a price that they felt was fair. In interviews Johnny Greenwood played down the role of music industry saviour saying that wasn’t they’re motivation. They simply wanted to allow everyone to hear the ablum as soon as possible and at the same time get people to question the idea of what music is worth. It’s still a really cool experiment.

The other part of me can’t help being dissapointed. Radiohead made a big wack of money from this “experiment”. Some blame has to be placed on the band and it’s management for not doing enough or anything to dispell the commonly held perception that they were making a huge statement by standing up to the major labels. This is from their website

Radiohead have made a record.
So far, it is only available from this website.
You can pre-order it in these formats:
Diskbox and Download.

I know it says “so far” but it could also have said “until we release the album in physical form”. They undeniably rode the hype that was created (perhaps unintentially) by their announcement to release the record for free and in doing so made a lot of money. How much of the money that they made was contributed under the perception that a cause was being furthered will never really be known.

I will continue to support artists that choose to release their music in this manner because I think it’s a great model and although there was some stumbling out of the gate I believe it’s the future. As for Radiohead’s album In Rainbows, the real shame is that it is a truly amazing piece of work and I hope that my perception of it in years to come isn’t marred by a slight bitter aftertaste.

And there it is. A proper old style, long winded, blog post.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 13th, 2007 at 5:14 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.