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But the song built a following in America, where its smouldering dynamic and cathartic chorus slotted neatly into the prevailing grunge aesthetic. Their first single, "Creep", a V C double-edged exercise in ironic self-deprecation, reflected the band's admiration of the Pixies, but was poorly received on its first release Radio 1 considered it "too depressing" to play. They changed their name to Radiohead (after a track on Talking Heads' True Stories) and began recording their debut album Pablo Honey. The band, originally called On A Friday, signed a six-album deal with Parlophone in 1991 after a chance meeting between the label's Keith Wozencroft and guitarist Jonny Greenwood in the Oxford record shop where the latter worked. In recent years, however, their sales have declined after Kid A, the Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief albums could only manage gold certification in America, which has led some to speculate that the new strategy may be a means for the band to compensate for declining popularity by keeping a larger proportion – indeed, 100 per cent – of sales revenue, rather than the small share previously offered by Parlophone. Radiohead are not the only act to embark on this strategy – their announcement was followed by a similar offer from Alan McGee on behalf of The Charlatans' next album – but they are the biggest.
Record labels, meanwhile, are struggling to find a new role within the industry, with many forced into the current, seemingly endless, round of mergers. The big chains, such as Virgin, struck deals allowing them to sell CDs at a more competitive price, but the smaller-volume operators – the independent shops that sustained the indie fringe – have been unable to compete and are disappearing. The effect on retailers, however, has been catastrophic.
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The industry came to realise that the larger war was lost and started developing relationships with "legal" download services such as Apple's iTunes, belatedly tapping into the revenue stream facilitated by the popularity of the iPod. Clearly, Napster had not harmed its prospects, and it could be be argued to have provided invaluable promotional assistance. Previously, their best placing had been the lowly 21 achieved by OK Computer.
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An unflinchingly experimental album, significantly different in style from OK Computer and featuring no obvious singles, it was a challenging work, yet despite the millions of free downloads, it still became the band's first American chart-topper. This was proven in 2000 when tracks from Radiohead's Kid A appeared on Napster three months before the album's official release. Some felt the opposite was true in many cases – that the exposure afforded by file-sharing could stimulate sales.
To date, they have instigated over 20,000 cases.īut not everyone believed Napster was entirely damaging to a record's sales potential.
The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) began sueing individual alleged file-sharers, an aggressive policy that backfired somewhat when the organisation appeared to be bullying victims including a 12-year-old girl, a 66-year-old woman allegedly downloading gangsta-rap, and, in 2005, a woman who had died the previous year, aged 83. And piling irony upon irony, far from having their aesthetic and political freedom compromised by the relationship, Radiohead have actually grown more artistically adventurous with each successive album, and remain one of the industry's most politically engaged acts. Ironically, it has been triggered not by penniless hippies in some inner-city squat, nor by indie-label firebrands, but by one of the biggest bands in the world, whose rise occurred under the stewardship of EMI, the UK's bastion of corporate entertainment for over three-quarters of a century. Now, as Radiohead offer their album In Rainbows to the world potentially for as little as a penny apiece, that revolutionary ambition is upon us. Ever since a cadre of politicised hippies tore down the fence at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, the more anarchically inclined of rock fans have demanded that "music be free", contending that pop's position under the entertainment industry umbrella fatally compromises its aesthetic and political freedom.