EMI is still sore about In Rainbows, so they’re doing the only thing they can do: trying to milk as much money from the Radiohead properties they do control as they can. They’ve already released all the old albums in a box set. What else can they do? Oh, yeah, a Greatest Hits album.
How can you blame them? If I owned stock in a major record label, I think I’d be on the phone with my broker right now. Granted, not everyone can afford to take the Screw You approach that Radiohead did, but it’s definitely becoming less and less important to have a deal with a major. The music industry is in a tizzy over the fact that technology is just plain making them unnecessary. It makes sense. Home recording software has been lessening the cost of getting quality recordings, and the internet/digital media have made distribution methods cost nothing. Scripted Failures has been recording pretty good DIY recordings for years, and we have practically no funds. With just a little money spent on the right equipment, we could probably make a pretty good sounding album at home.
So this Greatest Hits thing. It’ll sell. It’ll sell well. If you casually like Radiohead, you’ll probably pick it up. If you’re a die-hard fan, and you own all the original albums, you might still pick it up, as Justin says, “just to have”. Radiohead can’t do much about it, but drummer Phil Selway doesn’t seem to pleased about the prospect: “It’s well within their rights to do it. *sigh* So we’ll have to see.
But as I say, for us the main thing is that we’re excited about the
process of releasing In Rainbows and what we’re doing, around the
touring, around the way we’re able to release it, and most importantly
around the music itself.”