NME - 15th December 2007 Issue - Letters Page

Ok so this is a letter I had published this week...and ok many people have had letters published...but I am pretty chuffed with this one, the NME is the largest music magazine in the United Kingdom, can't do my ego any harm!!! haha!! -

NME,

So Radiohead have release an album online! Oh Jesus, this is it! The second coming…But wait, didn’t Bloc Party’s ‘A Weekend In The City’ come out by total accident. Could this be construed as a precursor to the Radiohead phenomenon now known as ‘Downloading’? Is that what its called? Because I have never used such downloading software as Soulseek(free), Emule(free) or the Wget facility on Linux distributions that enables you to rip entire albums from Myspace. Jeez, where have I been for the last 10 years? All this proves that Radiohead have peaked, treading on old ground with with technology that has been around for years and are finally succumbing to the old marketing strategy game. If they really wanted to push the envelope they should have released the album without warning, not even a remark on their website – hell, maybe they shouldn’t have released it outside of the band itself. Every artist releases full albums on the web free of charge, they get copied and downloaded and peddled around just like the home-taping of the 1980s. stop going on about it, stop granting these cocks a pedestal and just get on with it.

Kristian Cole