Radiohead, and the end of albums?

In digital music, rock band making confusing move to release singles only

Radiohead, one of the more popular bands embracing the music industry's shift to the online spectrum, said in an interview with The Believer, it would not be recording any more albums.  Instead the band plans to focus on downloadable singles.  This comes after Radiohead recently released a single in reaction to the death of Harry Patch, a WWI veteran who died at the age of 111.

Thom Yorke, Radiohead's lead singer explained,

"None of wanto go into that creative hoo-ha of a long-play record again...I mean, it's just become a real drag.  It worked with 'In rainbows' because we had a real fixed about where we were going.  But we've all said that we can't possibly dive into that again.  It'll kill us."

Although in terms of creativity, Yorke's quote may echo sounds of an artist tired, uninspired and trying to separate himself from the norm, in the digital spectrum this is how Radiohead has been functioning for the last few years.

Their hit 2007 album, 'In Rainbows,' was originally released with a very interesting business model- pay what you want.  This album was released digitally, on its own website, off Radioheads own record label.  Although Radiohead never officially shared how much money they made off the digital album, Warner/Chappel claimed the band made more money with the digital release of In Rainbows than it did its prior studio album, 'Hail to the Thief' - released by EMI.  Radiohead went on to later release physical copies of the album which can be found at pretty much any music store.  In the end, Radiohead proved with 'In Rainbows'  that music could be released successfully, independent of the traditional record label infrastructure.  Yorke explained, "it also worked as a way of using the Internet to promote your record without having to use iTunes or Google or whatever."

So with a successful album and model the band could easily follow again, why the shift to singles?  Well, in terms of making money, I'm not quite sure, yet.  On the first of its two recent single releases, "Harry Patch (In memory of)", the band sold the song on its website for £1 and donated 100 percent of the proceeds to the British Legion.  Shortly after, it's second single which has yet to be released, "These Are My Twisted Words,"  leaked all over the Web, suffering from Internet piracy (in fact somebody just sent it for me to check out via iChat.)

Radiohead seems to be adopting the real-time Web at the moment.  With the rise of services like Twitter and Facebook, where people are constantly reacting and interacting with all the worldly events around them - I believe Radiohead wants to be able to incorporate music in this matter.  I'm no music critic, but being a fan of Radiohead since their first album "Pablo Honey," released in 1993, you can hear that these new singles are more like quick sketches of music, almost like reactive demos to whatever the band needs to express themselves about, whether it be a current situation or some sort of emotional distress.