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Radiohead sells recordings to public after hacker threatens to leak them
- ErikAugust 7y agoRadiohead was quite prolific around this period. The release of OKNOTOK (and the bootlegs before it) show the band had a bunch of good material that didn’t make it to OK Computer. And now here we are 20+ years later releasing (or hacking) more material.
- DyslexicAtheist 7y agoyou speak in past tense. they are still one of the greatest and most influential artists today. How Radiohead Writes A Chord Progression: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alt9sQepob4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alt9sQepob4 Radiohead and the Rhythmic Illusion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBNvPb331SQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBNvPb331SQ How Radiohead use Modes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEi9ecBRR_4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEi9ecBRR_4 How Radiohead use Time Signatures https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76q5wv7kMEg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76q5wv7kMEg
- ralphstodomingo 7y agoA true power move. Not something everyone could do if they were threatened with the same, though.
- vorticalbox 7y agoSeeing as they were never intending to make profit from them any artist in the same situation could easily do this. It's pure profit, what is nice to see is that they are giving the profit to charity. Now that's really not something everyone would do.
- darkpuma 7y agoMedia stunt to promote the album? Is there any third party confirmation of this extortion plot?
- hoolm 7y agoI think this is a fair question, how did a hacker steal data off a minidisk like they claim?
- josteink 7y agoThe hackers leaked a minidisc archive. Everyone has backups, and some of these minidiscs were probably used in the 20th anniversary OK Computer re-master and re-release (OKNOTOK).
- vonseel 7y agoI assumed they somehow came into possession (stole) the actual minidisks.
- kebman 7y agoThey were using mind reading techniques to remember what was on the minidisc archive....... Ok, I'll show myself out.
- cuu508 7y agoFrom the pitchfork link in comments: > Unsurprisingly, Nicholas has a theory about this as well. “The situation that makes the most sense to me is that these minidiscs were digitized by a third party so the band could choose material from them for the OKNOTOK box set, and that someone involved at the third party stole the files and traded them,”
- jdsully 7y agoDigitized is an odd word choice. I’m pretty sure minidisc was already a digital format.
- 7y ago
- strictnein 7y agoIt's strange. There's two version of this story going around. Kind of the mainstream media version, and the version from the "hackers" themselves. Pitchfork does a good job of following up on the second version, which may be the more accurate of the two: https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/radiohead-fans-vs-black-market-sellers-the-battle-to-leak-the-ok-computer-tapes/ https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/radiohead-fans-vs-black-marke... https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kA8u6UhjbutZ-b7TXzmX4qkOTg6nGC1vPg50WwCcZyo/preview?pru=AAABa23CGUw*zFHssXLEl0f8FTzC_dEQrA https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kA8u6UhjbutZ-b7TXzmX4qkO...
- huis 7y agoYes this also fits the note on Basecamp: "as it’s out there it may as well be out there". I don't think they would say this if a hacker was holding it back for ransom. So the hacker tried to sell it for $150000 but now everyone can buy it for $18.
- alien1993 7y agoIt's probably because they announced it like this. https://www.instagram.com/p/BykT-NOA6_m/?igshid=6nm3aw87qo8d https://www.instagram.com/p/BykT-NOA6_m/?igshid=6nm3aw87qo8d
- staticautomatic 7y agoI am disappointed to learn that Radiohead has an Instagram account.
- justwalt 7y agoMost active bands do. It doesn’t say much other than “we’d like to reach our audience.”
- and0 7y agoRadiohead were pioneers in social media announcements, between the sudden pay-what-you-want digital release of In Rainbows to, as far as I know, inventing social media blackout / cryptic profile picture shenanigans.
- perfunctory 7y agoWorth mentioning they are donating all the proceeds to Extinction Rebellion https://rebellion.earth/ https://rebellion.earth/
- swarnie_ 7y agoWorst part about this.... These degenerate hippies have been doing there best to screw up my commute for months.
- bad_good_guy 7y agoMost people would agree that peaceful demonstration to push the government to take (meaningful and immediate) action on climate change is worth a lot more than your commute.
- FartyMcFarter 7y agoThey were blocking commuters from taking public trains though...
- adwww 7y agoThey actually backed down from their original - misjudged - planned action of blocking the London Underground. I agree it seems a silly target, people doing the right thing, but I think their point was we cannot continue business as usual and just hope for the best.
- FartyMcFarter 7y agoThey blocked the London DLR trains instead: https://www.nme.com/news/music/plan-ongoing-escalation-inside-extinction-rebellion-protest-bringing-london-standstill-2477513 https://www.nme.com/news/music/plan-ongoing-escalation-insid...
- mffnbs 7y agoBlocking commuters gets people talking.
- iamben 7y agoIf anyone is interested, here's a full breakdown of all the minidisks - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kA8u6UhjbutZ-b7TXzmX4qkOTg6nGC1vPg50WwCcZyo/preview https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kA8u6UhjbutZ-b7TXzmX4qkO... The (very good) version of 'Lift' that most articles are mentioning is on https://radiohead.bandcamp.com/track/md125 https://radiohead.bandcamp.com/track/md125 and starts at 10:13.
- app4soft 7y ago> The (very good) version of 'Lift' that most articles are mentioning is on https://radiohead.bandcamp.com/track/md125 https://radiohead.bandcamp.com/track/md125 and starts at 10:13. "Hackers"-way: never listen music online! $ youtube-dl -F https://radiohead.bandcamp.com/track/md125
- JimiofEden 7y agoThis is the version that I was used to, so I was surprised when I saw the video and it was a slowed down, more melancholic version. It was my favorite song from the band throughout my adolescence, and the only way to hear it was through a live bootleg or otherwise. So I thought that this version of it was just forgotten. Glad to see it is still alive (and makes me feel like I'm 15 again.)
- jamisteven 7y ago"For just 18 days, the band is making the sessions available via the online music service Bandcamp for a price tag of £18. “So for £18 you can find out if we should have paid that ransom,” joked Greenwood." So instead of them paying the hacker 150k, they'll make a few million. Brilliant.
- jmmcd 7y agoA few million they are donating to Extinction Rebellion.
- mrmonkeyman 7y agoAnd that is useful how?
- tomglynch 7y agoSeems like it was a 'leaker' not a 'hacker' and they didn't even demand anything. Radiohead must be playing this up.
- rangibaby 7y agoThen why did we hear about it from the band first?
- tomglynch 7y agoWe didn't. Have you read the google doc posted by the people involved? See here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kA8u6UhjbutZ-b7TXzmX4qkOTg6nGC1vPg50WwCcZyo/preview?pru=AAABa23CGUw*zFHssXLEl0f8FTzC_dEQrA https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kA8u6UhjbutZ-b7TXzmX4qkO...
- redlorryyellow 7y agoWe didn't, the files were originally leaked last Wednesday
- cr1895 7y ago
- newaccoutnas 7y agoInteresting they're not DAT's but Minidisc (given the quality difference)
- celticninja 7y agoFor price and versatility though a minidisc recorder/player wins out
- taneq 7y agoCool factor, too. I still miss using mine, even though my phone is way more convenient.
- toyg 7y agoMusic people here in Europe liked minidiscs a lot. If the internet had not happened, that’s probably what we’d be using now.
- cm2187 7y agoI don't think the internet killed the minidisc (internet connected devices only came long after minidiscs were gone). CD-R and flash memory probably did.
- ImprovedSilence 7y agoMinidiscs came well after CD-R. They were smaller (as was the portable player), held more data (lossless songs), and didn’t skip. The MP3 player that was basically a hard drive with a wheel, and then a phone, killed minidiscs...
- newaccoutnas 7y agoThat's not quite true: re: lossless https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Transform_Acoustic_Coding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Transform_Acoustic_Co...
- taneq 7y agoSeems like instead of pursuing legal action they're just waiting for the karma police to arrest that man.
- DyslexicAtheist 7y agoNah, they'll leave him High and Dry. No Surprises, it was top story in The Daily Mail[1] today. Seriously what a Creep. He must feel really Idioteqe now, wondering How to Disappear Completely. It'll be a Reckoner, Full Stop. [1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7129011/Radiohead-release-18-hours-unheard-music-raise-money-Extinction-Rebellion.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7129011/Radiohead-r...
- taneq 7y agoI don't care if nobody else appreciates it, I like what you did there.
- foolproofplan 7y agolooks like /r/radiohead has arrived
- kowdermeister 7y agoWow, this will spark a lot of "amateur" remixes and bootlegs. Nowadays music technology is very accessible to anyone who's willing to put in some time.
- pcf 7y agoOne would think so, but if you look at the amount of available multitracks vs actual fan remixes made with those multitracks... it doesn't seem like people are very interested in making new mixes of old material.
- jhabdas 7y agoCould someone share the link to the files? I'd like to grab a copy for free. Thanks.
- jamesb93 7y agoGreat marketing campaign. Definitely not staged...
- code_scrapping 7y agoAssuming you're ironic - do you really think Radiohead needs elaborate ruse to release their junk tapes? I had the feeling they're doing fine in their own trippy world. (RH fan, btw)
- _Codemonkeyism 7y agoSo someone who still a MD now is a hacker instead of a thief?
- adwww 7y agoThey probably already had access to the files through their work in a studio or whatnot. Still a thief, but not by literally stealing a physical minidisk (most likely).
- _Codemonkeyism 7y agoThe article literally says "last week stole lead vocalist Thom Yorke’s minidisk archive" He stole the minidisks.
- marban 7y agoOn a side note, I miss MiniDisk — It was somewhat of the pinnacle of mixtapes with best of all worlds. Tangible, digital, compact, non-destructive and joyfully tedious to create.
- guggle 7y agoThat was lossy audio compression.
- verytrivial 7y agoHi-MD (optionally) wasn't, but it showed up too late.
- guggle 7y ago2004... late indeed.
- fb03 7y agoLike op said, it compared to a 'mixTAPE'. Tapes weren't exactly lossless either and pretty lo-fi. With the MiniDisk at least you reached the 44100hz sampling rate which is adequate to store the crispness of most tracks.
- jimbo1qaz 7y ago44100Hz is sufficient to store any audio signal audible to every human studied to date (not dogs).
- fb03 7y agoExactly, 44100hz is pretty good and minidisk, while lossy, was way way better than tapes... hell, even Chrome tapes couldn't properly store frequencies higher than 16khz. Anything above 44100hz is just headroom for mixing. And listening to stuff at 96khz or anything like that is the audiophile version of buying gold plated hdmi cables.
- Dowwie 7y agoBandCamp has been my primary source for indie music of all genres. It's great to see Radiohead using this platform to share their work. One example of a label I would have never known about is Daptone Records, from NYC. The Budos Band, Sharon Jones, the Frightnrs and many more great artists have produced really great albums with this label. Sharon died in 2016 but will live on through her work as an artist and through the label she made as long as platforms such as BandCamp support it.
- mxuribe 7y agoYeah, budos band and sharon jones, etc. are really awesome!
- cholula 7y ago> Sharon Jones Amazing woman, I was lucky enough to meet her a few years ago. Charles Bradley is gone too, they both made some awesome music up to the very end. I didnt know they were on bandcamp, thanks for that.
- vmurthy 7y agoFascinating way of gaining the upper hand on your opponents (the "hackers" in this case). Best of all, the proceeds go to charity. Thank you, blackmailers. Reminds me of what Bezos did when some dickheads at National Enquirer decided to blackmail him with disclosing personal data [1] 1: https://medium.com/@jeffreypbezos/no-thank-you-mr-pecker-146e3922310f https://medium.com/@jeffreypbezos/no-thank-you-mr-pecker-146...
- analogmemory 7y agoRight? This is the best way to make the story a non-issue.
- necovek 7y agoWhile they are certainly in a rare position to do this, and public story from their side sounds a bit worse on the leaker, I still have to commend their approach to it. Just like I had to get their first album they sold online for pay-as-much-you-want to show music labels the finger (even though I am not a huge fan of their music, I am a huge fan of showing the finger to conglomerates that seem to forget their founding roles). Sure, that was a move out of privilege too, but not many in that position have done it anyway, so kudos to them.
- 52-6F-62 7y agoThat was revolutionary for me. I was a poor kid at the time, but a huge fan—so I was able to pay very little at the time to hear it. I was able to buy it again later at a fair price.
- SuperNinjaCat 7y agoI still feel bad for choosing to pay nothing for In Rainbows while paying a few bucks for the NIN Ghosts album released around the same time. You can probably guess which one grew on me the most (that isn't even taking into account the musical conspiracy theory of the whole 1 by 1 thing/remixing their own really big album released years before)
- 52-6F-62 7y agoYou know— it seems that’s exactly why they made it PYYC. I grew up on local music shows like that. Punk and indie and folk stuff. You’re the target listener in that case. I felt guilty at the time, too. Now that I’m older I understand. Don’t feel bad. It was intentional.
- cm2187 7y agoHow does a minidisc archive gets "hacked"?
- dagw 7y agoNothing appears to have been hacked. Radiohead sent a bunch of their old minidisc off to be digitized and someone at the company doing the digitizing appears to just have made a copy of the files for themselves. What we don't know is if that was the person that also released the files or if they handed them off to someone else who then released them.
- imtringued 7y agoI don't really get it. How can a "leaker" have any leverage at all? The type of person that will stumble on a leak wasn't a customer in the first place.
- abstractbarista 7y agoWouldn't be surprised if they made the whole thing up. Perhaps they can get more for the content this way. Nice hype boost.
- joezydeco 7y agoDid you miss the part where they are donating all the proceeds to charity?
- abstractbarista 7y agoNo, that's part of my point. They are potentially extracting more value out of something than they otherwise could have. Also, surely they love being strewn across the news over this. Good publicity!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- FillardMillmore 7y agoIf this "hacker" really wanted something lucrative (or possibly fame), they would find a way to procure Wu-Tang Clan's "Once Upon A Time In Shaolin" - the double album they released a single copy of that was bought by Martin Shkreli. According to Wikipedia, it's the most valuable album of all time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time_in_Shaolin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time_in_Shaolin I won't lie, I'd be quite interested to hear it.
- misiti3780 7y agoTLDR: This dump proves the Radiohead purposely scrapped a song (Lift) that was going to be a hit single because they wanted to change direction with OK computer. As a huge radiohead fan, the interesting thing about this dump is that the version of Lift (disk 15 starting at 9:30, but can also be found in other places in the dump) is totally mastered and ready to go on the album. Fans heard this live a long time ago, but when they released the first recorded version on Lift the b-sides of the Ok Computer 2017, it sounds much slower. The band stated that they recorded and mastered Lift in 1997, but they knew it would be a huge hit single and they didnt want that for OK computer so they scrapped the whole thing. No one understood this until now. Other highlights discovered in the dump: - Karma Police with different lyrics - Longer version of paranoid android - Exit Music and True Love Waits used to be the SAME song
- tclancy 7y agoMy wife and I were fascinated by a version of Nude from 10 years before In Rainbows.
- misiti3780 7y agome too!
- farmerbb 7y agoIf you're referring to the first song on the first disc, it's a combination of Exit Music and Life in a Glasshouse.
- misiti3780 7y agoyep you are right, it was a typo. thanks
- SuperNinjaCat 7y agoAfter reading this I couldn't help but remember an interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono (on the BBC world service in 1980) where John was talking about Phil Spector calling him up after a recording session saying: whispering over the phone "John....I've got the tapes...I've got the tapes, but there are helicopters flying around my house" It took them a while to get them back from the guy.