Well that worked surprisingly well.
Following the announcement last week that Radiohead was releasing its new album today, I went ahead and bought it, paying a reasonable £5 (+45p service charge), rather than the boastful 0.01p that so many people seem to be paying. Mind you, I’d suggest that a good number of them wouldn’t have bothered to buy the album on CD, so like Prince, Radiohead is probably going to get more exposure than otherwise (not that they really need it).
As for the process itself? Well yesterday, I was sent an email to say that the file would be a 48MB Zip file (and providing links for un-zipping software if I didn’t already have it), and that I’d receive another email today with my unique download address.
Then at 7.31am this morning I got my download email which I saw before coming into work. The download took about five minutes on my home broadband, and voila: ten mp3 tracks.
I suppose technically, the only disappointment was that the mp3s are only encoded at 160kbps. I’d have preferred 192 or higher. But it sounded good when listened to on my iPod on the way into work.
Music reviews have never been my strong suit, but this is very much Radiohead as you remember them, with definite reminders of OK Computer rather than the more experimental fare we’ve had recently. Well worth the cash.
And yes, when a non-collector’s CD is released, I’ll probably buy that too.