For those that have been off-line last week: RADIOHEAD released their new album “In Rainbows” as a pay as much as you think it’s actually worth digital download. As I enjoyed their music for more then a decade I was happy to learn that they chose such a consumer friendly approach with this release.

Some might argue that three quid are not overly generous, but I find the release to be somewhat reduced: The songs come as 160 kbits/s mp3 files, which is pretty much as low as you can go – I would not even have considered purchasing a 128 kbits/s release. While I would have preferred a >=192 kbits/s (or even a FLAC) release, I have to admit that the sound quality is excellent.

In case you are unhappy about the lack of an official cover you can easily help yourself with this large collection of inoffical ones.

I have to say it’s a wonderful album and although it’s not as “complicated” as the previous ones (and I really enjoyed that complexity) it still is a RADIOHEAD album and I am happy to hear that the online release seems to be a success. One can just hope that other artists get the message that people will actually pay a realistic price for high quality music if you give them the freedom to listen to it any way they want to.