TangleBones

Mac­world UK is report­ing that:

At issue is Apple’s insis­tence that artists allow fans to buy indi­vid­ual tracks unbun­dled. Radio­head object to this, as the band wants to sell its albums as they were meant to be heard – complete.

In accor­dance with their wishes, I hope you will join me in my solemn oath to uphold Radiohead’s wishes that their songs be allowed the artis­tic integrity that they deserve:

1. I pledge to boy­cott lis­ten­ing to Radiohead’s music on the radio or pur­chas­ing sin­gles, since it is so impor­tant to listen to their songs in the appro­pri­ate con­text. To help others enjoy this music, I will call in and request radio sta­tions not to play Radiohead’s singles.

2. I also pledge to only ever listen to the album in one sit­ting, with­out paus­ing, rewind­ing or skip­ping from track to track, as the artists intended. Oth­er­wise, I’d just be ruin­ing this amaz­ing music, none of which any of us have heard.

3. I will write to Radio­head to ask them to please release the CD as one single track to encour­age this kind of behav­ior. If they could rig it so that it won’t allow paus­ing, rewind­ing or fast-​forwarding, that would be great as well.

4. Since allow­ing people to rip the album will give them even more con­trol, I will ask them to include soft­ware on the disk to pre­vent that sort of whole-​sale destruc­tion of the integrity of their album. If they could make said soft­ware install itself into a hidden area on any com­puter that it is inserted into, that would be ideal.

5. I will also ask Radio­head if they would never play any songs off of their albums live unless they intend to play them in the order that they are on the album, and with the same exact transitions.

This is, after all, seri­ous music.

Or these jumped-​up nitwits could get over them­selves and stop trying to con­trol how people enjoy their music and just appre­ci­ate the fact that they have a huge fol­low­ing of rabid fans who will buy any damn fool thing they pro­duce, no matter how indul­gent or pre­ten­tious. Also, they should real­ize that allow­ing people to pur­chase a sample song off of their album with­out pur­chas­ing the entire album will gen­er­ate them more sales, not less.