Radiohead - In Rainbows

It says 10 x 160 KBPS! That's like... 1600 kbps! wow!

That puts the album at 46-48 mins, methinks. Yay calculators!

i thought it means ten (10) songs at 160kbps each...

(I was just kidding, but thanks for explaining anyway) :-/

I just got that update mail as well.

160kbps = ass.

Probably what they were figuring in terms of demand vs. server capacity or something, who knows. And if you got it for free, you got what you paid for.

(Personally I'm thinking that the final CD release will actually be a different mix or something similar.)

I came across this Thom Yorke article from last year, which in hindsight is kind of interesting, if only because it's clear they've been thinking about this whole thing for a long time now.

Radiohead hasn't resolved the question of how to release its new material. Although it seems that every last one of Radiohead's American and European fans is online, Mr. Yorke ruled out purely digital distribution because fans elsewhere -- Russia or South America, for instance -- are not so well connected. A company still needs to press CD's and get them to stores. ''The truth is that the traditional medium is still there, and you need it,'' he says.

Radiohead has been one of the holdouts against having their music sold on iTunes, Apple's online music store, because, Mr. Yorke says, ''the record companies basically don't want to pay the artists at all for the downloading.'' Without a contract, it can decide exactly how it wants to sell its recordings, which has left the band with ''too many variables,'' he adds.

''We were having endless debates, spending entire afternoons talking about, 'Well, if we do something, how do we put it out?' '' he recalls.'' It just became this endless and pointless discussion. Because in our dreams, it would be really nice to just let off this enormous stink bomb in the industry.''

Eventually the band simply decided to postpone any decision about recordings, although it has decided to own its recordings and license them for distribution rather than signing a standard recording contract.

''When we have something,'' he says with a shrug, ''then we'll find whatever seems the most appropriate way to put it out.''

He adds: ''I'm not really into the idea of picking an enormous fight now because I think the structure of the music business is in a state of collapse anyway. You might as well just let it get on with it. There's no point in us trying to help. And it makes you sound really arrogant, like, 'Yeah, we're going to mess up the system.' The system's built us, so that would be a bit silly, wouldn't it?''

Hopefully people who paid the most get emailed first so they can download it before the server melts.

Then all the people who paid nothing, or virtually nothing, can attack it en masse twelve hours later when whoever's hosting it has limited the connection speeds.

Somewhat against the spirit of the event isn't it?

Frankly I might just get it on Soulseek.

160!!! that's kinda bullshit

Yeah...I do feel bad for those who paid more than a few bucks to get a poor quality download. 192 is pretty much the bare minimum these days, isn't it? They should have made it clear from the beginning that it was 160.

I was waiting to hear what the bitrate was before deciding how much to pay. Having heard, I am paying nothing.

Hahahaha, I am so glad I didn't pay, now! Shame on you Radiohead!

Damn, I really hate that it had to be a low quality download, just because now it's going to shift from a "Radiohead sets off a landmine in the music industry" to a "Radiohead screw over their biggest fans with a shit quality download" type of story, for some people.

fella i know at work: "are you gonna download that new radiohead album?"

me: "nah, i'm not really into them."

"yeah, but it's free."

"but what would be the point? i'm not a fan."

"you may as well have a listen, it won't cost you anything."

"there's already way more music on peer to peer that i might like and haven't gotten around to listening to yet, that's always going to take priority, isn't it?"

"yeah...but it's radiohead."

: \

last 5 posts otm :/
xpost

I actually don't think the low bitrate is "unfair," just that it kind of sucks for the time being. So many people, the bigger fans, have said that they are going to buy the regular version when it comes out anyway, so this is just more of an incentive. That said, it does suck for the people who decided to pay more for the mp3s.

iTunes only has 128 kbps files right? So this may be better than that...

radiohead money grabbing bastards after all shocker

look who is on the front cover of the NME this week:

http://www.nme.com/images/thums/84_radioheadcovermagbits_01.jpg

I am quite possibly being too optimistic with this though.

I was wondering what iTunes uses. I'm fine with those.

DRM-free on iTunes (and Amazon, I think) is 256kbps. DRM on iTunes is 128, but that's AAC rather than MP3. Probably equivalent to a 160-192kbps MP3.

DRM-free on Bleep is either something like 256 or FLAC (i.e. lossless).

DRM-free on iTunes (and Amazon, I think) is 256kbps. DRM on iTunes is 128

How do you distinguish between the two on iTunes?

i was totally expecting them to offer like, choice of FLAC or LAME VBR V0. durr

It's too bad they couldn't have arranged it so that those who opted for a free download got the lower quality version, while those who paid a bit more would get a higher quality download. Especially for those who paid 8 dollars and up for the download, they should get a 256 or 320kbps download, I think.

The DRM-free high-quality files will be tagged as "itunes plus" and have a little + in a grey box next to them in the pricing field.

xpost

Yeah...I do feel bad for those who paid more than a few bucks to get a poor quality download. 192 is pretty much the bare minimum these days, isn't it? They should have made it clear from the beginning that it was 160.

-- Z S, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 16:51

This is pretty much OTM for me. I'd like to get defensive and suggest that from some sort of "self-preservation" standpoint this makes sense, but no.

I seriously can't believe everyone's getting all worked up over all this! Then again I just muttered in an Idolator comment that really it's just showing how levels of expectation have shifted. This is so much sound and fury over nothing.

Inevitable backlash, I suppose.

160kbps isn't nearly as bad as you guys are making it out to be.

Has everyone received that notification e-mail? I haven't seen anything since my original order confirmation.

Yes it is. I really dislike the sound of an mp3 that's encoded at less than 192... it's a pretty big difference.

xpost

I still think that it's a fucking amazingly great thing that Radiohead is doing - it just smacks of cluelessness in their tech dept.

160 is surprisingly low for a band that is so precious about preserving the integrity of their albums when distributed digitally. Possible reasons:

- server/bandwidth issues which they think aren't worth spending money fixing for how many people will actually care.
- they want to upsell people to the regular CD when it comes out.

ugh, who cares. for all we know these songs were specifically mixed and mastered to sound good as 160 kpbs mp3s.

xxpost, yeah, probably. Never attribute to malice, etc.

<i>ugh, who cares. for all we know these songs were specifically mixed and mastered to sound good as 160 kpbs mp3s.

-- bernard snowy, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 17:36 (5 minutes ago) Link</i>

i don't know if this is possible.

but jeez it's not that big of a deal.

still 256 would have been great.

It's above itunes quality, and it's pretty obvious (given the site crash last week) that server-wise they need to skimp a bit.

It's not above iTunes quality. 160k MP3 is about roughly the same audible quality as the 128k AAC they sell on iTunes.

earlier today: Xfm (London) announced "a world radio exclusive" Radiohead album playback at Midday tomorrow, now NME Radio have usurped them with an 11am playback

the original early-leaked unmastered HAIL TO THE THIEF mp3s sounded better in some cases than the finals.

I only really care about the 160kbps thing because I would have given a buck or two to cover bandwidth and my initial impressions with the assumption that I'll probably end up buying it in another format later to listen to at home. With bleep, or a few other sites, I don't mind paying a bit more since I know I won't really care about buying a physical copy later.

I just bought the new Band of Horses on wax and it came with a digital download - 160k. Lame. Same story with Of Montreal's "Hissing Fauna" a few months back - except it was 128k. Super lame.

GUYS OBVIOUSLY THE ALBUM WAS MEANT TO BE LISTENED TO AT 160KBPS

lol audiofiles

(sic)