Radiohead, like a lot of other bands, wants to let you make remixes of their latest single, Nude.
Unlike other bands, though, they want you to pay for the privilege:
Yep – they want you to pay six bucks for the privilege of remixing their song and maybe introducing them to a new audience.
Maybe you think that’s cool. A lot of people seem to – there are already over 800 remixes of Nude.
It stinks of crap to me, though.
Thom Yorke needs to check out Nine Inch Nails‘ approach. They’ve been releasing Garageband stems of their music for years, now.
They’ve been releasing their music with Creative Commons licenses that let you do what you want with the remixes.
They’ve been letting you download and share other fan remixes.
In other words – they get it.
What do you think? Is nickel and diming your biggest fans make sense, or is Radiohead full of it?
Here are the details:
Radiohead, iTunes and GarageBand are giving you the opportunity to remix the band’s new single “Nude”.
To make remixing easy, the separate ‘stems’* from the song are available to purchase from iTunes _here_. The ‘stems’ available are bass, voice, guitar, strings/fx and drums. You can mix them in any way you like, either by adding your own beats and instrumentation, or just remixing the original parts.
If you purchase all five ‘stems’ from iTunes during the first week they’re available, you’ll be sent an access code to a GarageBand file ready to open in GarageBand or Logic. However, you don’t need GarageBand to do a remix, all the stems are in iTunes Plus format and compatible with several music software platforms. The GarageBand file will be emailed out on April 11th.
Finished mixes can be uploaded _here_ where the public will listen and vote for their favourite remix (voting ends May 1st). You can also create a widget allowing votes from your own website, Facebook or MySpace page to be counted as ‘mix votes’ back on radioheadremix.com. Radiohead will listen to the best remixes.
Nude is out now in the UK on CD, 7″ and download.
*’stems’ are the component parts of the song.
If you have any questions / need some help please click here.
Two comments on this:
1) The remix contest is organized by xl recordings, so the decision to charge for the parts may not have been radiohead’s at all.
2) Charging for remix parts is not all that uncommon; I know many of the contests that are hosted by beatport.com charge for parts.
You know, I’ve never heard of beatport.com which makes me think it could be a good idea post discoveries of remix websites. Well, I’d get something out of that anyhow.
As far as the Radiohead thing goes… well, whatever.
Yup, Beatport have charged in the past for the privilege of remixing Moby, Booka Shade amongst others. They usually give away 2-3 free stems each time, but any additional elements are charged at $2 per stem.
I dunno, the whole “Radiohead=thievingbastards” hype about this is kinda moot, they pretty much give away their album for a nominal amount (I paid £5 fore the 192kbps mp3s, that’s a fair price to me for a digital download album), but when they charge for the remix bits, it’s like they’re being branded as worse than Starbucks et al.
Lots of CDs are coming out at €5 a pop with those awful “insta-remix” software packages on them, and they invariably have samples of hugely downgraded quality. You’re usually talking 128k mp3 or less. Assuming the Radiohead stems on offer are 320kbps, why not charge for them? You do get what you pay for.
@liam: you kidding? They should pay you for remixing their songs. You get bunch of useless samples and have to spend at least 3 hours putting this altogether not to mention software and knowledge you need to invest. And you have to pay for it? 😀 Cmon.
I completly agree with synthhead. Radiohead is considered as ground breaking band who dont care about major labels. The truth is, that they are aleady popular so now they dont need labels support.
And free “in rainbows” is a myth, in fact, its pricey than any other of their album. Downloading it from their site is pure hell, I guess its because I live in Poland, and they dont give a shit about polish fans. Thus, “in rainbows” is only radiohead album which I dont have.
for some folks like myself it”s a big opportunity to remix radiohead.
i invite you to my website to hear my remix… it’s really been fun and worth the 5$.
well as a fan and musician i really enjoy doing a remix to nude, and it’s only 5$, i invite you all to hear and vote at my website.
http://www.julianberg.com/nude.php
Julian
Glad it works for you. Really – 5 bucks isn’t a lot to have hours of fun remixing. Free is better though!
Next time, put a link to the page where you have your remix. Your site says it’s under construction, so it’s hard to figure out where to look!
sorry, made a mistake 🙂 it’s just this one:
http://www.julianberg.com/nude.php
and yes, it was hours of fun !!
thanks.
Check out my remix if you get a chance.
http://radioheadremix.com./remix/?id=1527
-Max
@Xezzy: I agree somewhat that Radiohead should pay people to do remixes, but only if they’re planning on making money from them. If they put your remix out as a commercial release from which they’re making money, then they would and should owe you money. If it’s merely as a promotional tool (as is the case here), then there’s no reason why they should pay for unsolicited remixes. C’mon, if 50,000 people put together 50,000 remixes and demanded payment, Radiohead would go broke pretty quick, not to mention having an over-abundance of probably highly mediocre versions of the exact same track.
To be honest though, I actually do reckon they should give the remix parts away for free. However, based on the way most labels operate at the moment regards public domain remixes, they’re not doing anything particularly wrong or different from the way the rest of the industry operates.
I reckon everyone’s outraged and horrified at their gall in charging for the remix parts merely because it’s Radiohead (what with them being the reusable/recyclable eco-friendly earth-goddess types that they are). As I mentioned before, Moby’s done the very same thing on Beatport (not iTunes, cos iTunes is evil), charging for remix parts, and no one’s taken the moral high ground against him.
please take a moment to listen to the Brael remix of Nude. You will not regret it. Thanks
http://www.radioheadremix.com/remix/?id=562
Being an artist, I would certainly charge other people to remix my tunes. I’d personally look at it as an insult when someone has the audacity to TAKE samples of my work and compile them with other random, miscellaneous pieces of work, perverting the very context of my sound. Any true artist with self-respect will see how wrong it is on *so* many levels.
Someone else commented on here, “They should pay you for remixing their songs…”. WTF? You got it way backwards, stupid asshole!
Any band that has to pay people to make remixes –certainly in the name of more exposure– is pretty pathetic, being that the band has to rely on other people to add production to the work, let alone, cut it up in a way that will make the original sound more marketable.
When/if it comes down to another artist buying samples from another artist, it shouldn’t just be bought, but sign royalty contracts.
If you have to rely on, or even turn to remixes of your music, perhaps one should question, ‘why have I gotten into this once amazing craft of music composition?’… ‘what’s the point of doing this?’
Some say this changing music market is just evolving into another direction, because of technology; but with all honesty, the whole world of music is de-evolving, slowly. Dignity and passion in music are soon to be a thing of the past.
Uh, they did give away their last album, right?