A few weeks ago, fan site Radiohead At Ease — among other sources — reported on an unsubstantiated rumor that Radiohead’s long-awaited eighth album was already complete. Then, this morning, the Internet woke up to find that apparently the album is finished after all and fans can pre-order it immediately. Physical copies of the new record won’t be available for a few months, but the songs will be available for download this Saturday. Wow.
This is the way music works in the 21st Century: no waiting through months and months of unconfirmed deadlines, no release dates announced several quarters in advance, no slogging through interminable marketing campaigns trying to build up anticipation, no manufacturing timelines holding up the delivery of the songs, no record companies just generally getting in the way. When the music’s done, it ships. This will soon be the norm for record releases but at the moment it still strikes me as kind of amazing. Now, if the band could just finish recording their records a bit more quickly, we’d really be living in the future.
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