http://slyoyster.com

Every since the hoopla surrounding the “pay what you want” album In Rainbows, one of the big questions was how much did Radiohead fan’s pay for the album and how much did that net the band. There’s no doubt that this was the most important record release this year: prompting everyone to focus on the music, talk about it and it’s relationship to how much you pay for an album. It was really a deft marketing move on the part of Thom Yorke and the guys.

For once, music wasn’t something indisposable that gets thrown away with the next day’s music postings. More than anything the release made music an event again. In fact, along with Stylus closing up shop, Amy Winehouse’s disasterous free fall, OiNk getting shut down, this was probably the biggest music event to happen this year - at least for me.

A study by comScore Inc. reveils that “Some 62 percent of the people who downloaded “In Rainbows” in a four- week period last month opted not to pay the British alt-rockers a cent. But the remaining 38 percent voluntarily paid an average of $6.” So two out of five people didn’t pay for the album? Crazy.

Though this may give us an aproximation to what so many people have been wondering, it looks as if their data sample and numbers might not be entirely accurate.

The results of the study were drawn from data gathered from a few hundred people who are part of comScore’s database of 2 million computer users worldwide. The firm, which has permission to monitor the computer users’ online behavior, did not provide a margin of error for the study’s results.

Between Oct. 1 and Oct. 29, about 1.2 million people visited the Web site the band set up for fans to download the album, comScore said Monday. The research firm did not say how many people in its study actually bought the album.

At the end of the day, however, one has to believe that the fiduciary aspects of this story matter only from a business perspective and not so much a musical one. (Via: HT)

So just to clear the air. We’re doing our best to keep the stories and stuff flowing, but truth be told we’re just kiddy kids on Christmas morning. We downloaded the latest offering from Radiohead last night and we’ve been listening to it pretty much straight through until our eyes are bloodshot. The great news is this album is wonderful.

Beautiful, haunting, lots of soundscapes to try and unfold. Drums, beats, and strings! Holy moly, their are wondrous stings tying the entire album together.

Essentially, it’s a Radiohead album. I would say this one is more refined than everything they’ve put out since Kid A. And that’s saying a lot. Anyway, today is a good day. It sounds like they’ve arrived at a place where they are finally free to stop pushing the envelope musically (which if they kept going where they were going they’d already be over the edge) and just make beautiful music.

And even though it’s cloudy and overcast in Portland, the sun is shining for sure.

Update: Album review after the jump. MORE »

Filter Magazine is reporting that Radiohead, who basically sent Earthquakes throughout the music industry last week, with the announcement of their seventh LP being available for donation on their website, is close to signing a distribution deal to release In Rainbows on CD.

Among those vying for the honor of distributing the disc are Warner Bros, former label EMI and ATO, who are currently seen as the most attractive candidates.

Although there was high speculation that Radiohead would not sign to a label, the band wants to distribute In Rainbows to a mass marketplace and understands that a label partnership is a necessity to achieve such a goal.

The digital release of In Rainbows drops October 10, while the hard copy is slated to hit stores in early 2008.

Good for them. Not likely that too many folks will be buying the cd at a Best Buy or Walmart, seeing as every Radiohead fan already will be downloading it tomorrow! And then once that happens it’ll have already leaked and so and so forth. Not like Radiohead needs the money and I can’t imagine too many people rushing out in 2008 to get this unless there is a banging single on the radio.