Music Under Fire

If you've somehow avoided reading about Radiohead lately, they've managed to keep themselves in the news, and with gusto. Opening up this past week to reltailers, Radiohead's album is the #1 seler in the UK according to the official UK charts. This comes as quite a surprise since their album had been absolutely free only months ago. Now, you can buy In Rainbows anywhere from $7.99 at Best Buy and Amazon.com to as much as $13.99 through conventional CD retailers. The biggest news of it all may be that Radiohead, who has long shunned the music program used by millions, has succumbed to deliver their album on iTunes.

So who cares, right? You might be saying to yourself, "I already have it, so what's the big deal?" The reason to care, for those of you who chose to bid on In Rainbows back in October, dwells in the sound quality. That's right, if you're an mp3 collector who prides themselves in soundquality, then this may be a good opportunity to upgrade one of this past year's most controversial and industry changing concepts (in terms of selling). The "free" album delviered via the inrainbows site delivered the album in a mere 160 kbps, as opposed to the optimal 320kbps that you could attain. You can still buy the discbox, however.

Of course iTunes mp4 file versions only read 128 kbps, but that equals that of 160kbps. If you've converted your files into ACC format, this will save you some space on your iPod, but in the end, you'll be losing out on sound quality since the default is 128kbps. So in the end, go out and buy yourself a copy of the album if you're into hi-fi; you'll get the full 320 kbps you've been looking for. If you have no idea what I'm talking about here's an more in-depth explanation on sound quality. As for the album itself, you can't go wrong deciding to pay for it this time around if you decided to do the latter and are now feeling guilty.

If you can't get enough Radiohead, check out the Easy All Stars' album Radiodread, which is great if you're into reggae or just headed to the beach and need your Radiohead fix. You can also pick up Exit Music, which features a slew of various covers of your favorite Radiohead songs of the past ranging from Mark Ronson's version of Just to The Bad Plus' jazzed up rendition of Karma Police. Its all worth checking out. Oh, and if you don't have Radiohead's In Rainbows B-sides, you can get them by downloading the zip file here.