The studio-live performance will be broadcast by the BCC, which revealed its intentions at the BBC Worldwide website. According to their statement, the performance will be available to broadcasters in June, but is embargoed until July, 1st. As indicated, Radiohead’s performance will be courtesy of the In The Basement series, a web-only program that has featured such artists as The White Stripes, Gnarls Barkley, Beck, and P.J. Harvey.

As for the Radiohead portion, the King of Limbs performance will be a live, in-studio performance, lasting for 55 minutes. The performance will be filmed in hi-definition, and is expected to be broadcast around the world. Of the partnership, the BBC offers:

Salim Mukaddam, VP Music Television at BBC Worldwide said, “It is a real honour to be working with Radiohead on this project. Radiohead are a band that rarely performs for television, but when they do, it’s a moment to savour. There is already huge anticipation for this performance and we’re delighted that they’ve decided to work with us at BBC Worldwide, confirming our position as market leaders in Music Television. As a fan I cannot wait to see these beautiful songs brought to life in this programme.”

As for Radiohead, it’s not their first time performing for In The Basement. There is, of course, video of their 2009 set:

In 2007, Radiohead released "In Rainbows," allowing fans to pay whatever they wanted for downloads of the album. Radiohead will try a different strategy this time – simply charging a set price $9.00 for MP3s and $14.00 for WAVs).

RadioheadTHANK YOU FOR WAITING5 hours ago 18,573 likes 1,680 comments

The whole "In Rainbows" thing didn’t work out quite as well as the band had hoped. In 2008, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke told Hollywood Reporter:

"I think it was a one-off response to a particular situation," Yorke said of the band’s downloading policy for the album "In Rainbows." 

"It was one of those things where we were in the position of everyone asking us what we were going to do," he said. "I don’t think it would have the same significance now anyway, if we chose to give something away again. It was a moment in time."

"The King of Limbs" will be released in a physical "Newspaper album" format on May 9. 

An interesting mix to say the least. Google explains:

Why did we focus on musicians and fashion designers this round? It’s often the clothes we wear and the music we listen to that help express our personality and style. And when we first unveiled iGoogle artist themes, we heard that many of you wanted even more themes in these areas. We hope this new collection gives you more choices so that your iGoogle page reflects your personal style.

Oh yeah, it’s fashion week too as Andy Beal points out. That might have something to do with it. As for my personal style? I’ve yet to come across an iGoogle theme that reflected it, but perhaps that’s just because I have no style.

There’s 28 new designs in all, and that puts the total number up to somewhere close to 1,700. That number has grown significantly since Google started sharing the iGoogle Themes API earlier this year. I’m surprised we haven’t seen more advertisers making their own iGoogle themes to promote things like movies, similarly to how they do with AOL Instant Messenger Buddy Icons.

There are some such examples like this one from The Dark Knight, but I’m fairly certain it was created by a fan, rather than made by the movie studio’s people.

This seems to be a relatively untapped branding outlet. It may not have the reach of a buddy icon since it’s not sent back and forth between users, but a theme will still attract some eyeballs by users looking for a new one, and by other people who see it on the users’ screen, so I can’t imagine it being a totally wasted effort.

Radiohead took the opposite approach with their theme(s), by not even including their name or likenesses in the design. The only way you’d know it was a Radiohead theme would be to see Google’s own label. But that’s because Radiohead are artists and are not worried about suckling the "corporate teat".

Anyway, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more brands being incorporated into themes in the future, especially given Google’s recent aggressive advertising endeavors.

Name your own price may have been as low as zero for a lot of people who eagerly took advantage of the Radiohead promotion for its In Rainbows album. Whatever deal the fans received, they ought to treasure it, as frontman Thom Yorke said it won’t happen again.

Yorke suggested in Hollywood Reporter the event happened under unique conditions:

“I think it was a one-off response to a particular situation,” Yorke said of the band’s downloading policy for the album “In Rainbows.”

“It was one of those things where we were in the position of everyone asking us what we were going to do,” he said. “I don’t think it would have the same significance now anyway, if we chose to give something away again. It was a moment in time.”

Other acts like Nine Inch Nails, Prince, Portishead, and Coldplay made efforts to get music into the hands of their fans for free. One must believe this led to positive outcomes; Prince, for example, had to add several London shows to the original slate when demand exploded after he distributed a CD with a newspaper.

Free music isn’t the kiss of death for a band. The Grateful Dead and Phish generously permitted bootlegging of their shows by fans for years, enhancing their reputations in a world where corporate radio simply didn’t play jam bands on the air.

Yorke hit the main point in his comments, noting that Radiohead can enjoy a direct relationship with fans now. In truth, any band with a few minutes to get on MySpace or Facebook or Bebo can do that too.

The real point of that relationship involves both the band and the fans. No one expects Yorke to be online at odd hours answering questions in a forum; he needs to be in a studio. But whatever personal time musicians put into the fan relationships, safely behind a chat window and webcam, should yield a solid public relations gain for the band.

Here are some recent highlights – and they are sad songs:

• Radiohead gives the finger to record labels and at the last minute releases their album In Rainbows on their web site.
• Sites like Imeem stream major label songs free on their site and of course there are plenty of illegal download sites.
• Or there is a Chinese search engine that ignors copyrights altogether (check this out).
• Paul McCartney ditches EMI and goes with a record label from a coffee shop label (Starbucks’ Hear Music) and it proves successful. It sold more than 160,000 copies in its first week.
• You know things are bad when a business starts to sue their customers.
• Music label EMI says they are cutting staff by 2,000 and other labels have or cutting staff.
• People are buying songs rather than CDs, which has had a huge impact on sales. CD sales are down 19 percent and keep dropping.
• DRM issues have soured customers – they restrict what devices play downloaded music.

It seems like almost everyone is giving away free music downloads these days. You can get free music with your fast food (would you like some music with your meal?). You can get free music with your cell phone. What’s next? Oh yes, free music downloads with your Pepsi.

The Super Bowl played a major role in helping iTunes gain exposure. Now, iTunes is losing popularity with the music industry because of strict pricing and terms. Even though iTunes dominates the market, they have a new blow. The Super Bowl says they’ll work with Amazon’s music download site instead of iTunes. Amazon’s service just launched this September and it’s far more open. Record companies might be the next to favor Amazon.

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1. Google Gears—heralded as a step toward the browser as a desktop

9. Facebook API—duh.

17. Zoho Notebook—compiles all kinds of information and enables you to share it

18. Radiohead’s In Rainbows—check out our our coverage of In Rainbows if you missed this ongoing story

20. Mint.com—brings all your personal finance information together, from bank accounts to credit cards

21. Microsoft Popfly—hailed as better than Yahoo Pipes, Popfly is the best masherupper around.

23. Ask.com—commended for Ask3D and AskEraser

The PC World story has met mixed reviews. At this writing, the “Recommend this story?” vote was almost exactly 50/50. What do you think? What did they miss?

via

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We have to forgive Current TV for being a little confused in announcing the Radiohead show happening at the end of the month. Will it be live or not? Current isn’t certain, judging by their statement (emphasis added):

Radiohead will join us to play an exclusive live US TV performance of their new album "In Rainbows" on Current TV, all commercial free. The pre-recorded performance will include all of the tracks from "In Rainbows" plus some "other bits" as Thom says. The Daily Fix tells you when to tune in.

C’mon, Al Gore, is it Live or is it Memorex, as the commercials used to ask? Pre-recorded is cool, we understand if the band have plans for New Year’s Eve themselves.

Silicon Alley Insider seems to have the truth, straight from Thom Yorke via Radiohead’s website. Said Yorke:

As you may now have heard we will be broadcasting a pre-recording of some songs and other bits on New Years Eve..
you will be able to view it online from here at midnight new years eve, uk time that is…

radiohead.tv

as well as other places that i am not sure about.

this is a wee celebration of the release of the physical manifestation of ‘in rainbows’.

Pre-recorded it is.

Radiohead shook up the music industry this fall when they released In Rainbows through the Internet. Some fans paid to download the new album, while others took the cheap route and named their price as zero.

The band said they were pleased with how the experiment performed, though they have unfortunately chosen not to share actual figures from the downloading period.

Just three months after they started the experiment, Radiohead is going back to the traditional way of selling albums – in stores. The band let their fans decide what to pay for their new album. Some fans thought free was a great price. Radiohead didn’t give out numbers, though comScore took a stab at it. They estimated that 62 percent of those who downloaded In Rainbows didn’t pay for it.

It seems like they could sell the album on the site (which could use a redesign of the shopping process) and create a model where you had to pay a set price. But for now there are no downloads.

The music industry keeps taking one punch after another as they try to figure out something that works. Free downloads are plentiful and just like Web 2.0 business models, ad-supported seems to be the buzz. But is it sustainable?

Too bad they skipped Christmas for in-store sales. The CD/vinyl and download won’t be at stores until December 31st. No official word on if they’ll be back on iTunes. You can buy the Discbox online.

What is known (according to Wikipedia) is that they aren’t signing back on with EMI. They will go with indie labels XL Recordings in the UK and TBD Records in North America.

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When Radiohead announced their download plan for ‘In Rainbows’, they made the album’s purchase a name-your-price model. Naturally, plenty of people wondered what fans would pay for something when paying nothing was an option.

A comScore report suggested the fans weren’t being very forthcoming with the funds. Less than four out of ten rewarded Radiohead’s experiment with some hard-earned cash.

That report of widespread cheapness drew a rebuke from the band. Radiohead sent out a statement that E-consultancy and many others posted, rejecting comScore’s assessment:

"In response to purely speculative figures announced in the press regarding the number of downloads and the price paid for the album, the group’s representatives would like to remind people that, as the album could only be downloaded from the band’s website, it is impossible for outside organizations to have accurate figures on sales."

"The figures quoted by the company comScore Inc are wholly inaccurate and in no way reflect definitive market intelligence or, indeed, the true success of the project."

ComScore analyst Andrew Lipsman defended his company’s assessment in an MTV report:

"We’re confident in our data," he said. "There’s a minimal margin of error based on the size of the sample we used and the narrow range of values."

Radiohead could clear up everything by releasing the details about ‘In Rainbows’, something they refuse to do. It’s an unfortunate stance, since it hints at the truth being closer to comScore’s estimates. We would like to see disclosure by the band, as whatever the figures end up being won’t hurt their sales with their fans either way.

“Recent research conducted by Harris Interactive* indicates that consumers are suffering from "Web Search fatigue." The study revealed that while the vast majority of the population uses a search engine to find information on the Internet, only 15 percent of people find what they’re looking for with their first search. Typically, people need to conduct three to four searches to find the right result.

While search engines can and will continue to improve, we think making queries smarter is also part of the solution. While there are a handful of seasoned users and professional searchers out there who employ Boolean operators, site restrict and other advanced techniques, no one (ourselves included) wants to have to think hard about which search terms to use. Our vision was to build a system that helps users confidently construct more sophisticated and targeted queries without slowing them down.

In this first release, we’ve broken the problem into two parts. Part One provides assistance as you type. This has massively reduced the number of misspelled queries being submitted and saves typing time for slower typists. It can also link you deeper into the results space, saving you a step on those quick in-and-out sessions.

Part Two helps you move your searches forward, backward or sideways so you get the results you actually want more quickly. So if you started with a query for ‘Thom Yorke,’ you might get a forward (refining) suggestion for ‘Eraser,’ his most recent album, or a backward (expanding) suggestion for ‘Radiohead,’ the band he’s a

member of. You could also get a sideways (or related) suggestion such as ‘solo albums‘ which, when clicking on the term in the left-hand column of Search Assist, will lead you to other lead singers with solo albums like Gwen Stefani or Eddie Vedder.”

More info on Yahoo! Search blog.

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