Skip to main content

News

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 Radiohead webcast final US show

UK band Radiohead quietly celebrate end of US tour

Jonny Evans

  • Email to a friend
  • Print this article
  • Bookmark this page
  • RSS feed

Hit UK band, Radiohead, who turned the music industry upside down with their trust-based approach to sales of their phenomenally-succesful 'In Rainbows' album have done it again.

In a quietly-orchestrated move, the band last night streamed the final Santa Barbara show of their US tour, making the video available to fans via the band's official website.

Little advance notice of the band's plan was given. Thursday saw the band publish an enigmatic message warning Mac users to download either Flip4Mac or VLC, because the software "might come in handy".

Hours before the event took place bassist Colin Greenwood wrote: “Hello! To celebrate the end of a brilliant tour, we’re going to webcast the last show here in America. We’ll be playing live in Santa Barbara, at the Bowl. It’s one of our favourite places to play."

"We’re going to try and share as much of it as we can on the webcast. Nigel, our producer, will be helping out getting it to you, so if it goes wrong….It’s live!"

Segments of the webcast are now beginning to emerge online, a report explains, also speculating the band made the move so quiet in order to make the best of limited bandwidth for the transmission.

That Radiohead chose to use a non-QuickTime format for the webcast isn't entirely unexpected. The band was among the last digital hold-outs, refusing to make its music available through iTunes in an attempt to preserve album sales, though the recent move to sell music through the Apple service saw Radiohead's 15-year old track, 'Creep' jump into the top 40.

The debate surrounding protection of the album format through iTunes has intensified in recent days, with labels now experimenting with removing tracks from iTunes in an attempt to preserve the format.

Meanwhile, Radiohead recently began streaming 'In Rainbows' through Last.fm.

Email A Friend

Email this article to a friend or colleague:



PLEASE NOTE: Your name is used only to let the recipient know who sent the story, and in case of transmission error. Both your name and the recipient's name and address will not be used for any other purpose.

<<prev article | back to news index | next article>>

Question of the day!

Mark Hattersley
Editor in Chief

Do you share your creations online?

Question of the day!

Do you share your creations online?

% of Macworld readers agree with you

Yes
TBC
No
TBC

What do you create and how do you share it?

124 characters remaining

Follow the conversation at @TabletChat

paintings & illustrations, mostly, which i upload to flickr.RT @fragmentedm

I draw manga/anime characters. I also do graphic design and photography.RT @spialelo

Yes. I usually put them up on my #deviantart account for feedback on how to improve.RT @spialelo

Comments received


Phil said on Fri, 29 Aug 2008

The Santa Barbara show was great. In Rainbows was played in its entirety, with highlights being Weird Fishes and Jigsaw. I saw them at Lollapalooza, that show was slightly better because of the crowd being so hyped. The Santa Barbara crowd was really quiet, thats to be expected for any California show I guess.

Disclaimer
Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Macworld. Macworld accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content.
Click here to read the house rules.

Click here for the latest reader comments

Latest News


More news...