As a fan of prog-rock (a genre with a very long history of concept albums), I cannot but agree with Radiohead on this point.

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maye the album sucks and radiohead is worried no one will buy the filler tracks

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I, instead, completely disagree. If the album is good from top to bottom then people will buy it all. If not, they'll just buy one song. Maybe, as I often do, they purchase the first song aired on the radio and discover they like the music and then download the whole album (Mark Knofpler, Linkin Park, Katie Melua, Pink Martini just to name a few that got my money for their whole album).

Come on, as a fan I agree that you will buy the whole album anyway, maybe even on pre-order, but to say you agree with Radiohead because they want to sell the whole album to you seems so blind!
1. you can purchase their singles in any store, not different from iTunes
2. buying the album on a song per song basis will cost you more
3. you can get the single tracks "elsewhere" at a fraction of the cost (the fraction being: cost/zero)

I'm sick of the whole industry having been blind about iTunes Store for years and now, with the money it might generate, suddenly "take notice" and "feel ripped of by Apple".

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Will the CD version be one long continuous track too, so that if we rip it ourselves we get only one track?

There seems to room for compromise here - for instance Radiohead could have demanded one or two "album only" downloads, and if they chose those tracks judiciously it would have encouraged most purchasers to download the whole album. And a note in the album description that it's meant to be listened to as a whole would help too.

I can see Radiohead's point as artists trying to maintain the integrity of their work, but I don't think any of us want Apple making artistic distinctions between the ones who "deserve" the whole-album treatment and those who don't.

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Kids these days don't care about the story that can be played through a complete album anymore and artists are creating albums that have songs that have nothing to do with each other to suit that. That's why iTunes works for most albums.

If the Beatles music starts getting sold on iTunes and SGT. Peppers is being sold song by song then you're completely destroying the whole album for yourself if you buy 2 songs out of it.

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i definitely respect their right to make that decision, and if they feel the album can't be split up, then fair enough, don't split it up.

I would like to know, however, if they will be releasing any singles from the album, and if so, how they can justify it being ok to play individual songs on the radio but not sell the same songs individually

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This isn't news though, is it. Radiohead haven't 'ditched' iTunes, they've never made their albums available on it. The only Radiohead tracks available are those on other compilations.
If Radiohead cared so much about the 'integrity' of their albums, they would never allow any of their tracks to be available outside of the original album, so no appearing on compilations and perhaps even no singles.

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What if I just don't like the other tracks on the album, be it Radiohead, or the music of Jesus himself. I should then be forced to listen to them and then like them?

Sorry music snobs and elitists, but if I want to download just two tracks of Radiohead or the Beatles I damn well will do just that. And guess what, if artists want to go back in time to full album days ($20), I will go back in time to the p2p (free) days.

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I think people are forgetting that in the Classical genre on iTMS some albums are split into two - with say 3 tracks per "work" They could have done it this way.

I was looking at one the other day which cost £7.99 for the album or £3.48 and £7.00 for the two works on the album. Surely this would have been a compromise?

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I'm just glad I didn't have to sit through all of 'Tommy' again to get to 'Pinball Wizard'... Oh wait, different era. How I wish, how I wish I were there....

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I call bullshit. I've seen other albums on iTunes that aren't broken up in to singles. The album isn't some sort of artistic medium that must be upheld. It's a marketing/production vehicle, created by the record industry. Nothing but a collection of songs. Radiohead are songwriters. So why should we be forced to buy their crap in total? If the album is that good, people will buy the entire thing.

Radiohead are really nothing more than self righteous musicians who can't craft an entire album worth of songs that the public would buy without being forced to buy the entire kit/caboodle.

Wake up guys, it's 2007.

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I think there was more going on here. I remember when Dave Matthews Band came to iTunes, they only allowed the sale of album and not just its songs,

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as #7 has said, Radiohead never made their albums onto itunes.

I think this is a huge shame - as it's been said before, most albums people buy are for only 2 or 3 songs. Radiohead is a great band, but they have put out albums that have some mediocre tracks.

I think this is nothing more than hubris and Radiohead are trying to maintain the alternative label until the very end. Like the article said - Thom Yorke is still on iTunes. Hypocritical?

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If Thom Yorke comes around to our house ONE more time to bleetingly complain when I listen to No Surprises on my iPod mini without playing the rest of OK Computer, I'll flip. So help me, God, I will.

Sure, in his artist's garret, this must make perfect sense, but in my modest contemporary experience, it is highly delusional to think that much/all of the listening populace will listen to an album all the way through, in order, in one sitting. These days I rarely listen to a complete album, let alone in the correct running order. There are some albums that I've bought in the last couple of years (on CD, as I rarely/never buy entire albums as downloads) that I have never listened to as a whole, in order. Even the good ones.

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They may do as Explosions in the Sky or Godspeed! You Black Emperor that do albums containing 3 or 5 songs (and for which buying the tracks can be far less expensive than buying the album as a whole), or as noted as for classical music (but the problem is different since there is no more author copyright to be paid...). If they want, radiohead could propose one single track if they believe their work cannot be heard separately, and if they sell it for 0.99 €/$ few purchasers would complain.

However, their first album contained only one trck (Creep), the bends contained a lot of good tracks but my favorites were only present on the japanese version, amnesiac or kid A had clearly separate tracks, so I would not say radiohead is the most legitimate artist to ask for their albums not to be dismantled.

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Good for Thom and the boys. I totally support them. Not jsut because im a fan but because i beleive in what thier saying. While im no fan of the demise of the album i think it can make sense for the most part to release single tracks. I think this would work fine with Pablo Honey, The Bendz, or Yorke's The Eraser. These albums like most modern albums are more a collection of works produced in a given time period. But from OK Computer forward, the album is the work. The fact that there are track breaks is jsut a minor convenience, but really they are ment to be listened to in a continuous fashion as one peice like a symphony or a movie. I think they woul dbe doing themselves an injustice as artists if they helped support this random downloading of tracks. Im sure people will get what they want off the networks anyhow and im fine with that as well. But i dont think the band should necessarily support it if thats not the artistic vision.

In the sake of full discolsure i also have to say i dont generally listen to "songs". I listen to albums. I hate playlists and singles. The few playlists i have are simply multiple albums back to back (for instance i have a playlist called Bristol which has every Tricky and Massive Attack album on it). I cant tell you the name of nearly any song, but i can tell you the artist, album, and track number. :-)

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oh gimme a break, anyone who agrees with them is mistaken and might as well dig a hole in the ground. If you want to listen to an album as an album, then fine - do it.. but now that the individual song purchase has become the norm, anyone who still believes they can force the buying public to only buy in an 'album' is just crazy.

Even in the old days of vinyl, i often skipped songs i didn't care for... did the artist come to my home and tell me i had to listen to the whole thing?

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This isn't artists vs. record companies, or artists vs. Apple, this is a rare case of the artist believing they have the right to override a consumer's choices (normally it's the record companies who want to do that).

So MAYBE I might opt to only buy a portion of the album. Guess what? I lose out. The only thing of Radiohead's that it would harm would be their bottom line (shocker).

All of the people who actually care about it would buy the whole album anyway. The remainder will either pirate it, or buy the whole album and only listen to certain tracks. From a non-monetary perspective, this achieves nothing for Radiohead.

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Meh, their loss (disclosure: I am NOT a fan--in fact, I think they're the most over-rated band of the decade). It's nice that they're pulling in so much money they can afford to lose sales like this, but fortunately most lesser bands don't treat their fans like children. (2nd disclosure: I don't listen to the radio, the concept of a 'single' is lost on me, and I only buy albums anyway--yet I think the customer deserves the freedom to buy as little or as much as they wish.)

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So they don't like their album broken into individual songs? Makes you wonder why they continue to release singles if a track is unable to stand alone. What's even more hypocritical is that they generally release two CD singles with the same track but different b-sides which, naturally, all the completists are going to buy.

Also, for a band which is trying to push a green agenda they seem happy to use plastic to allow their music to be distributed rather than the far more eco-friendly internet.

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