Infinitive Splitter

In case you haven’t heard (Hi Mom! Hi Dad!), Radiohead has opted to sell its first album in four years through its own website, for no fixed price, with minimal promotion. As of yesterday, the day after the album’s release, Radiohead-devoted news site Green Plastic could only guess what the record’s cover art looks like.

The New York Times and other important news outlets say the decision is making record executives even more nervous than they normally are. It has:

incited talk of a revolution in the music industry, which has found the digital marketplace to be far less of a cash cow than it once dreamed. Though Radiohead is in a position that can’t easily be replicated — it completed its long-term recording contract with the music giant EMI while retaining a big audience of obsessive fans — its move is being seen as a sign for aspiring 21st-century music stars.

Hmm.

I had not heard a single note from or read a single review of the album before I bought it. I paid a little more than $10 — £5 in the British-only online store — for it, and since it is neither Radiohead’s best album nor bad, I feel like I got my money’s worth. (”Nude” is Radiohead at its haunting, beautiful best. “House of Cards” reminds me, in a good way, of that one album by the New Radicals.)

I bought the album blind because it is a Radiohead album, and Radiohead albums are never bad. Most albums by other bands are bad — or, at least, not good enough to persuade more than a handful of human beings to pay for them. The key phrases in the Times paragraph above are still “long-term recording contract with the music giant EMI” and “a big audience of obsessive fans.”