Radiohead released 18 hours of minidisc recordings rather than pay a ransom

[thewayne]

Made when they were developing the album OK Computer, their frontman was hacked and the contents of 18 minidiscs was stolen. Rather than pay a ransom of $150,000 to return the recordings, Radiohead is releasing them to anybody via Bandcamp and all the proceeds are going to the climate activists Extinction Rebellion.

I think this is quite awesome. Flipping the bird to the hacker who stole a copy of the recordings, rendering his efforts valueless, helping a good cause, and providing something to people who might value them. Some of the tracks have already been made available to the public, but Radiohead is being quite forward with saying that these tracks are works in progress and very rough and not very good, so don't expect much out of them.

Me personally, Radiohead is not my cup of tea, but some of you may like them or have friends who are fans and might be interested, so I thought I'd spread the news. The Bandcamp release is only going to be up for a very limited amount of time, and is available for the next 18 days.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jun/11/radiohead-release-hours-of-hacked-songs-to-benefit-extinction-rebellion


Here's the Bandcamp link. It's 1.8 GIG of material, so make sure you have a good connection! The discs are released as one entire image, so you'll be effectively listening to one contiguous album with no breaks in it.

https://radiohead.bandcamp.com/


Bandcamp is a great place to explore new music, and they pay a lot of money to artists, both starting out and more established. Highly recommended.

Comments

[seasonoftowers]

That's a great way of dealing with blackmail. And I agree with you on the awesomeness of Bandcamp - I buy all my music from there

[thewayne]

Another site you might check out is FreeMusicArchive.org.  I've gotten LOTS of music from them that I've used on videos that I've made.  Excellent search capabilities. It is a brilliant response to being blackmailed, totally wastes the criminal's efforts!

[bibliofile]

I like that people can (if they like) now see what some of the band's music is like in progress.

[thewayne]

I think it's great for those who have that interest.  Through watching lots of making of/behind the music sorts of documentaries, I have an appreciation of how music is made, but this is a fantastic opportunity for Radiohead fans who have that itch.

[thewayne]

Rolling Stone released an article of the "must listen to" tracks from the Bandcamp releases, including time marks.  But they might not be easy to find as they went from the raw dumps that the hacker released rather than the Bandcamp recordings - the hacker dump included some things that were edited out of the Bandcamp release which were copyrighted, like a recording of the James Bond theme. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/radiohead-minidiscs-hacked-ok-computer-guide-847277/

[silveradept]

That's an interesting way of handling a hacker. And Radiohead is probably right that the people who are interested are the people who want to listen to the minidisc recordings as single files without breaks or breaking things up.

[thewayne]

I thought it was pretty awesome to nullify the hacker’s work and to benefit a certain type of fan and a charity - all at the same time!