It's always exciting when Radiohead makes a new album. Their latest, A Moon-Shaped Pool, is available as of today directly from the band and iTunes and Amazon. It's also streaming at Tidal and at Apple Music, which is apparently a great service if you like having all your music deleted from your computer. I liked one of the two songs they put out last week a lot, and the other one is growing on me. Plus, after 20 years of being a Radiohead fan, I'm really looking forward to hearing the band's ninth album. But I'm perplexed about which package I should buy, because unlike some lucky Radiohead listeners, I don't have access to infinite money.
As is the common practice now, the band is offering a few different packages to people interested in buying the new record. The two most appealing and reasonable ones are digital ($13) and vinyl ($29). The vinyl, of course, comes with a download code, but the records (or their codes) won't be shipped until June 17. So, if you want to hear the record today (or anytime in the next five weeks), you gotta buy the download—which is fair enough. But then if you like the record and want to add it to your vinyl collection, you'll need to buy it a second time. As the song (track 11 on this album, btw) says, "True Love Waits."
Unless of course, you want to just dive right in and spend $86.50 on the Special Edition.
Yes it's a lot of money for a record you haven't heard, BUT, you can be certain it will be a lovely package, with vinyl, CDs, two bonus songs, and what is sure to be some pessimistic scritchy-scratch artwork by Stanley Donwood and good old Tchocky. And anyway, by the time September rolls around and the package gets shipped to you, you probably won't even remember having spent nearly $100 way back in May. PLUS, you get your digital download right away.
There are, it's safe to say, worse problems to have in this world of problems. You can't blame a band for pushing the high ticket items on the first day a record is for sale. (They may be anti-capitalism to a degree, but they're still a British rock band, so they're going to be selling you some special editions.)
But given the perception of Radiohead as fair traders, and more to the point, given how much online music consumers complain when the metadata on the bittorrent they're illegally downloading is inefficiently cross-indexed, I have a hunch this is going to piss a few people off.
OK, my download is ready. BYE.
