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Radiohead Open Sources Music Video

Posted by kdawson on Fri Jul 18, 2008 10:21 AM
from the look-ma-no-cameras dept.
Graphics Media Music Software
ruphus13 writes "Following up their 'pay what you like' music album, Radiohead is once again pushing forward with trying to innovate in an industry that has typically innovated with lawsuits alone. Radiohead has now decided to open source a music video. According to the article, 'Its new single "House of Cards" has a video that was created using advanced visualization techniques and various computer-rendered models. The band has teamed up with Google to release the data for the promo as open source using a Creative Commons license.'" The article links a making-of video on YouTube. The music of "House of Cards" was not open sourced, just the visual data. according to a story in the UK Guardian, people are beginning to play around with the data.
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Submission: Radiohead Open Sources music video by ruphus13 (890164)
[+] News: Study Suggests Music Industry Embrace Piracy 293 comments
unassimilatible writes to tell us that according to the Financial Times, the music industry should embrace illegal file-sharing websites. A recent study of the recent Radiohead album release found that huge numbers of illegal downloads actually helped the band's popularity and, by extension, concert ticket sales. "Radiohead's release of In Rainbows on a pay-what-you-want basis last October generated enormous traffic to the band's own website and intense speculation about how much fans had paid. He urged record companies to study the outcome and accept that file-sharing sites were here to stay. 'It's time to stop swimming against the tide of what people want,' he said." Update 19:46 GMT by SM: Several readers (including the original author) have written in to mention that it isn't stressed enough that this study was engaged by the music industry itself, making the findings that much more interesting. Take that as you will.
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  • Open source music videos? (Score:5, Funny)

    by hyperz69 (1226464) on Friday July 18 2008, @10:25AM (#24242993)
    JUST IMAGINE WHAT THIS MEANS!

    Not country and western enough... fork!
    Copyright issues on logos... fork!
    Can't resize video screen... FORK!

    Though I think in the music business they call them re-mixes / mashups.

  • 3 Radiohead (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sam_paris (919837) on Friday July 18 2008, @10:25AM (#24243007)
    3 Radiohead, they're like the anti-Metallica :)

  • If it is not BY (think BSD) or BY-SA (think GPL) then the analogy is wrong...

    BY-ND? No derivatives?

    BY-NC, BY-NC-SA, BY-NC-ND? Cant use for commercial purposes... not close to what Free Software or Open Source Software is all about. I looked for an indication of the license but could not find one.

    Odd that. I will look some more. Has anyone found what I have not?

    all the best,

    drew

    • Re:What's the license? (Score:4, Informative)

      by zotz (3951) on Friday July 18 2008, @10:51AM (#24243435) Homepage Journal

      Found this:

      "The CSV data files are released as follows:

        * Copyright 2008 Radiohead.

        * Some Rights Reserved: Data used to produce the House of Cards music video

        * is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License"

      Not open Source folks... at least not like the open source according to the OSD.

      all the best,

      drew

  • Big Ideas (don't get any) (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pzs (857406) on Friday July 18 2008, @10:40AM (#24243241)

    They're just jealous because their videos aren't as good as those done by amateurs [youtube.com].

  • Sure, it's a publicity stunt, but I think it's pretty cool. Fits their electronic theme well, and just looks neat.

    Nothing wrong with trying something new. Have you seen most of the other videos out there?

    • Four ideas. Count 'em.

      1. Laser-range scan the band.

      2. Laser-range scan a street scene (slight variation of #1)

      3. Colourise and dissolve the street scene (maybe two ideas here)

      4. Add lots of jittery noise.

      That's it. Nothing else. Yes there are videos with fewer ideas (eg "stick band against white backdrop and film them") but Radiohead are supposed to be cerebral and have lots of ideas.

  • All-in-one page (Score:5, Informative)

    by canagape (1108777) on Friday July 18 2008, @10:52AM (#24243447)
    http://code.google.com/creative/radiohead/ [google.com]

    The video + making of + data explorer. Note, it can take a while for the data explorer to finish loading the video, but it's pretty fun to play with.

  • editing? (Score:5, Funny)

    by 1u3hr (530656) on Friday July 18 2008, @11:03AM (#24243621)

    THe music of "House of Cards" was not open sourced, just the visual data. according to a story in the UK Guardian, people are beginning to play around with the data.

    I suppose the double capitalisation in the first sentence balances the lack of initial caps in the second.

  • I was 15. And back then they called it the Spice Channel [wikipedia.org]...
  • Check out http://cashmusic.org/ [cashmusic.org] It was founded by Kristin Hersh from the Throwing Muses. It's a pretty good concept for a site where artists can share their work in an open source way.
  • Unlike the Radiohead music our music is released via creative commons. Free even for commercial uses. http://www.politicsapocalypse.com/ [politicsapocalypse.com] I agree this is a cool thing to do but Radiohead charge people to download the sources to remix their album, they have said that the preferred way of listening is to buy the CD - not the mp3s, etc etc... Check out bands such as Nine Inch Nails to see a way of making $ while being nice to the fans.

  • It's a clear case of using open source as a buzz word to get publicity, and /. has fallen nicely for it.

  • So let me get this straight: Radiohead sells 1 million albums and each member gets what? 200k? (How many members are there again?) 200k for a platinum-selling album? And assuming people were only paying $16 a CD the label grosses $15 million from that same album? Great Jebus that is lopsided. And here I thought indentured servitude had gone out of style.
    • Exactly. I can't stand country music, but for whatever reason some people continue to listen to it. I don't understand why they don't consult with me first so I can tell them what music is good and what's bad.

      • Exactly. I can't stand country music, but for whatever reason some people continue to listen to it. I don't understand why they don't consult with me first so I can tell them what music is good and what's bad.

        Well that's a little extreme. I would prefer it if the bands just came to me and I'd give them a few pointers.

        • Yes. All artists from all genres of music would sound better if they took a few pointers from me.
          • "How about you replace that turntable guy with Eddie Van Halen?"
          • "Those lyrics are really good ... I just think you should space them out more so they have greater effect. Here's a perfect example: Right now, you say 'fuck you' thirty-five times in the chorus with no other words to frame them. Try adding a few, to make it 'Who the fuck are you?' Then get Pete Townshend to add a guitar track and you're set."
          • "I really like what you've done here. Let's do this, though. Set aside a track on your Pro Tools for a saxophone. We'll get a small live room set up with a really warm tube condenser mic, bring in Kenny G, and have him beat you to death with his sax in the live room."

          Constructive criticism FTW.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by moosesocks (264553)

        I think this may refer to Radiohead's extreme aversion to doing anything that could be considered remotely "popular."

        For some reason, they were upset by the success of OK Computer, and dove off the edge, into stranger, more experimental territory, where the music has to be more "appreciated" than "enjoyed."

        This is a shame, because they're amazing in their moments of brilliance, and incredibly talented musicians. However, their latest stuff just seems a bit too pretentious to be palatable.

          • Maybe they're not trying to get good album reviews, just make an album they like. There's more to music than the 4 minute pop radio format. Kid A is perfect atmospheric mood music. If you're giving it your full attention, you're doing it wrong.

            It's not even correct to call Kid A "experimental", they knew exactly what they were doing, and succeeded.

      • Try starting with bluegrass. Any real music lover can appreciate the virtuosity and songcraft of Bill Monroe. Then broaden your horizons a bit, try some Jimmie Rodgers or Doc Watson. There's definitely good country, they just don't play it on the radio.

        I think Waylon Jennings said "Garth Brooks did for country music what panty hose did for finger fucking."

    • True right! It was only their first album that was any good. That one with Wonderwall on it!

    • ...between now and ten years ago.

      Check out:

      Kid A
      Amnesiac
      Hail to the Thief
      In Rainbows

      they're all excellent.

    • I rather like In Rainbows, it's quite a lot more accessible than Kid A / Amnesiac / Hail to the Thief. (The songs from the first two make more sense on the live mini-album "I Could Be Wrong". They'll never make another OK Computer, though, just as the Manics will never make another Holy Bible.

      • I rather like In Rainbows, it's quite a lot more accessible than Kid A / Amnesiac / Hail to the Thief.

        Too bad their audience hates accessible music.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by twistah (194990)

      While I do agree that some bands, such as Nine Inch Nails, are more genuine in their efforts, that doesn't mean you should discount Radiohead. They are not "aging rockers", in the sense that they're not relevant anymore; they have a huge in-built fan base that would buy their records even if they come out on 8-track. It's a bit of a publicity stunt, but it's more progressive than what most major-label bands are doing.

    • Why "Only" a publicity stunt? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by GroeFaZ (850443) on Friday July 18 2008, @11:18AM (#24243829)
      It's not like they have some purely altruistic, over-arching mission statement that forbids them to have any kind of publicity, do they? First and foremost, they want to make and sell music. Unlike many other artists, they also happen to express strong views on politics and economics, but those expressions wouldn't matter much without any amount of publicity. The way they distributed and marketed "In Rainbows" was INTENDED as a strong statement (a publicity stunt, if you will) on the business model of the big labels, a proof that success in this business is possible without them. Even if they don't repeat this exact method of distribution with their next album(s), I'd be truly shocked to learn that they want to rebuild the bridge they have nuked in word and deed.

        • Hmmm.... According to RIAA Radar [riaaradar.com], "In Rainbows" was released on Ato Records / Red.

          In any case, Ato Records / Red is a RIAA label, so I think your point stands.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by X0563511 (793323)

      Which is funny, because this is only the video parts of it. You can put your own music to this. Take their data, models, etc and go do something completely unrelated with it if you want. It's art, man.

    • Creative Commons is not a license. They put out a range of licenses, not all of which would be considered Open Source licenses. So, do you know which Creative Commons license(s) is/are being used?

      all the best,

      drew

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