I thought it was pretty cool late last year when Radiohead announced that the intial release of their "In Rainbows" album was going to be via digital download. There's nothing innovative in providing digital downloads in this day in age. The innovative aspect of this was that the buyer could name their price. Download the entire album for whatever price you're willing to pay. It's probably safe to say that no major act had ever done that before.
To take things one step further, though, I got an email mid-last week indicating that Radiohead were making available five tracks via iTunes (like you need a hyperlink...). These five tracks comprised the quasi-individual tracks of their upcoming single release, Nude. The premise here is that fans can download each track, remix the song as they see fit, upload it to a provided site, and have it judged on by listeners. Again, I'm not sure I've heard of another band willing to release individual tracks to any of their songs. For $4.95, I was willing to take the plunge and see if I could manage a remix that didn't make me want to hide in a closet, much less be afraid to post it for review.
I did the remix using Audacity running on Solaris. It's nice to see musicians that aren't being stifled by the status quo in the recording industry. Golf claps all around.
If you're so inclined, the voting ends May 1st, and you can find my entry here. If you like it, shoot me a vote. I have no illusions of garnering enough votes to even capture anybody's attention, but it was a nice temporary diversion.
That reminds me, I'd tried for quite some time to get Audacity running on Solaris in the past. I was quite pleased to find out that it's now possible. I plan to describe how in my next entry which I promise will be much sooner than my blogging history might indicate.
Did you build Audacity yourself or get it from somewhere? I found an older 1.2.3 build that depended on some Blastwave built bits - I'm curious if you used that or have something more recent?
Posted by Wayne Abbott on April 09, 2008 at 03:26 PM MDT #
BTW Nine Inch Nails (www.nin.com) went further than Radiohead did with Ghosts I-IV. Great set of 36 tracks available in FLAC or lame encoded 320kbps mp3 formats with album art, etc for $5 - the first 9 tracks (Ghosts I) was available for free in 320kbps mp3 format. Reznor and Public Enemy many years ago also made tracks available (instrumental, vocal) for fans to remix.
Posted by Wayne Abbott on April 09, 2008 at 03:30 PM MDT #
Thanks for the comments, Wayne. I'm not a big NIN fan, but it doesn't surprise me that they've done something similar. Props to them (and Public Enemy) for also pushing the envelope.
By the way, I built Audacity myself. I'll be describing exactly how to do this in my next entry, hopefully very soon. I had tried that same build you referred to, and had a lot of trouble getting it to work.
Posted by David Hollister on April 09, 2008 at 04:41 PM MDT #