We all know that Radiohead has clearly changed the music business forever with its bold bid to allow fans to name their own prices for the group's latest album, "In Rainbows," released online yesterday about 2:00 a.m. EDT. But there are two new observations to add to this very cool development that aren't so obvious.
First, I suspect that millions of fans worldwide were trying to hit the Radiohead web site all at once at several points during the day, a nightmare for all but the most technologically adept companies. But, despite intermittent server outages, the downloading process was, as the Chicago Times' Steve Johnson comments, "as smooth as silk."
Did Radiohead hire top-notch engineers to design a system that could handle the massive traffic and bandwidth downloading demands? I think they had to, otherwise this event could have turned into a black eye for the band. Wired's Eliot Van Buskirk suggests that the band's hosting supplier Virtek must have taken measures to prepare for the onslaught of downloaders, but is an event on this scale as simple as just adding server capacity? (Van Buskirk later noted that it took only seconds for him to download his album, which was my own experience.)
If, as has been suggested, other musicians, including Oasis and Jamiroquai, are mulling over going straight to the public with new music releases, then the demand for geeks who are capable of helping bands go directly to the public will no doubt mushroom. A new and very desirable sub-speciality of the high-tech field has been born.
More importantly, Radiohead has succeeded in mounting a "communal listening experience like no other in pop history," as the LA Times Ann Powers writes. Aside from big live events, such as Live Aid, no other musical happening has gathered together so many people on the Internet to listen to music.
Millions of PCs, iPods and digital stereo systems around the globe today are pumping out the superb music that makes Radiohead's groundbreaking move even more powerful. It would have been one thing if Radiohead shook up the music business with this direct-to-the-fans, pay-what-you-want model and the album itself were just mediocre, or worse, outright bad (not a possibility with Radiohead).
But "In Rainbows" is more than worthy of the mass attention it has received. The album is deeply gratifying and a superb example of rock artistry at its best, and becomes even more compelling with each subsequent listen. As Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield (who gives "In Rainbows" four-and-a-half stars out of five) notes:
In Rainbows has uptempo guitar songs and moody acoustic ballads, full of headphone-tweaking sound effects. All 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.
Cynthia Brumfield at 10:50 AM|Comments(0)
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