Radiohead's+response+to+a+'changing+digital+landscape'

Overview
To those of us who haven't been in a coma for the last decade, it will come as no shock that album sales, digital or otherwise, have been [|cut in half in the past decade]. This is largely due to file sharing sites and programs that allow fans to get music for free. According to a[| 2010 CNN report], “The volume of unauthorized downloads continues to represent about 90% of the market, according to online download tracker BigChampagne Media Measurement. Artists today are facing (or desperately trying to avoid) this fact in different ways. There is the [|Metallica method]—sue Napster, hire a consulting firm to track down and punish every single low-down, no good college student attempting to get a free adrenaline high off of “Enter Sandman” and punish them to the full extent of the law....or....you can take a more culturally aware approach.

Enter Radiohead. Today marked the release of their eighth studio album, //The King of Limbs.// The album is the second record in a row that the band has released within a ten day span following announcement, purely in digital form, and without the aid of a record label. The previous record, //In Rainbows// made history in 2007 when Radiohead announced it would allow fans to name their own price and download it straight from the band's website to their computers. Their reasoning, as expressed by frontman Thom Yorke in an [|interview] later that year, was that “every record for the last four—including my solo record—has been leaked. So the idea was like, //we'll// leak it, then.”

A novel idea. Instead of desperately flailing about in the waters of a changing digital culture, at least float for a while and plan your next move—that may be all that Radiohead is doing, because that may be all that can be done for now. It remains to be seen if there is a way to truly capitalize on this digital landscape, or if bands like Radiohead are simply making the best of a bad situation. The elephant in the room for musicians is, are they part of an industry that is ultimately financially doomed due to the ease of free digital downloading? Thom Yorke isn't shedding much light on the outcome of the band's 2007 //In Rainbows// experiment, at least not in terms of actual numbers. [|When prompted], he replied, “It feels wrong to say exactly what happened. But it's been a really nice surprise and we've done really well out of it.” Perhaps not as well as they would have liked, though, seeing as the “name your own price” method was replaced with a “Pay $9.00” method for //The King of Limbs//. But watch an interview with the band, or read bassist Collin Greenwood's [|essay on Censorship], and you will be hard-pressed to pick up on any anxiety about the inevitable spread of free copies of the album through torrent websites, online streams, and the like. (I personally got my copy from my roomates flash drive, because on top of being a diehard Radiohead fan, I am also dead broke.) The band understands that it is just that: inevitable. Times have changed; perhaps album sales will never again be the financial focal point of the music industry as they have been in the past; in that case, the added exposure through digital downloads and file sharing may be exactly what artists need in order to boost attendance at their concerts and make money in other ways—from the looks of Twitter today it would seem that they are certainly getting exposure: among the top “trending” words today were “Radiohead,” “Thom Yorke,” and “The King of Limbs.” [|Check the album out on Youtube]and make your contribution to the (d)evolution of the music industry.

**History**
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**Opinion**
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**Future Trends?**
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