Radiohead has made its latest album, titled "The King Of Limbs," available for pre-order. If you were hoping this would be another pay-what-you-wish arrangement unlike "In Rainbows," well, you're out of luck.
The band is at first making the album available only as a digital download and as part of a "newspaper album" package. This includes a CD, digital, and vinyl versions of the album (two clear 10-inch vinyls disks); a special record sleeve to hold the vinyl; and "many large sheets of newspaper artwork, 625 tiny pieces of artwork, and a full-colour piece of oxo-degradable plastic to hold everything together," according to the official "The King of Limbs" website.
Buying just the digital download without all the fancy packaging costs $9 U.S. for MP3 and $14 for WAV. Customers who pre-order "The King Of Limbs" will be able to download the digital versions on Saturday, Feb. 19th.
Buying "The King Of Limbs" through this pre-order "newspaper album" will cost either $48 or $53 for U.S. customers, depending on whether you go for the MP3 or WAV format.
But if you'd like a physical product but don't want to shell out the extra bucks for the photos, vinyl, etc., don't worry: "The King of Limbs" will be on sale in regular CD and 12-inch vinyl on March 28th "in all good record stores" (however one defines that). And, I would assume that the digital versions will be for sale on iTunes and Amazon.com's MP3 store.
As much as I like Radiohead, I'll opt for the plain old CD or digital download, rather than going for the "newspaper album."
