Atomictumor

Most of the time, doing IT support for Europe kinda sucks.  Early hours, staticy phone lines, indecipherable accents, and other problems can make it a bit of a bear.

But not this morning.

Because Radiohead released the download link for their new record “early this morning UK time”, and I was already awake and up for that beep.

And the record freakin rocks.

I’m not going to do a review of it, because I kinda suck at that stuff, but to say that Thom Yorke is actually singing songs with soul, the music is minimal, with a bit of an 80s pop thing to it, and I’ve listened to it for 3 straight hours.

When the ladyfriend came over this morning laden with pancakes and breakfast biscuits, she said that the radio talk show thing was having a discussion on how releasing the album online is going to change the record industry.  Citing that them, Nine Inch Nails, and (heh) Oasis were all planning on doing the direct online release thing, its representing a shift in the paradigm that has been in place for a long time.

Lord knows it needs to happen. The recording industry has managed to get itself portrayed as a soulless, evil, money hungry corporate bastard machine, what with its price fixing, its marketing tactics, and its terrorist campaign against file-trading.

It tickles me that a band as popular and big as Radiohead is seeing fit to tell these big companies to bugger off, and still finding a good way to get music out to the public.  Truth is, the paradigm shifted a long time ago, and people are just now picking up on it.