Radiohead Catalog Goes Digital For the First Time, But Not on iTunes

All Radiohead albums are now for sale as unrestricted MP3s at the U.K.'s biggest digital outlet, 7digital.com, marking the first time the band has agreed to sell its entire catalog on a major download site. The band continues to reject iTunes -- the world's largest digital outlet -- and other services, refusing to make individual tracks available for sale in addition to full albums, something iTunes requires of most artists. At 7Digital.com, users from the U.S. and anywhere in the world can buy all six Radiohead studio albums and live album I Might Be Wrong for seven pounds -- about $14 -- each, and one of about twenty-two official single releases, bundled with B-sides, for 1.79 pounds, or about $3.60. Individual tracks are not available. The move was a widely expected next step for Radiohead, who previously made full albums available at 7Digital-powered site warchildmusic.com, with a portion of proceeds going to charity, and temporarily made two albums -- OK Computer and The Bends -- available on iTunes a couple years ago. Last July, Clark Benson, CEO of industry research frim the Almight Institute of Music Retail told Rolling Stone, "Radiohead, by their next release, will probably come to some terms with iTunes."

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

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