Boo to Radiohead

I'm a big fan of Radiohead and I admired their pay-what-you-want download offer for In Rainbows last year (even though I waited for the CD to come out). So I was psyched when I learned (over at Volokh, of all places) that they were offering the constituent parts of their latest single, "Nude," for use in a remix competition.

Although I've never submitted anything for such a contest, I've messed around with loops from various ACIDPlanet competitions and tried unsuccessfully to work with parts of two tunes from My Life in the Bush of Ghosts that David Byrne and Brian Eno made available for download. In all those cases, the files are free - you can even download a free version of ACID to manipulate them with!

Sadly, the files in the Radiohead contest are available only for purchase from iTunes. Although I'm sure they're cheap, there's something unseemly about charging for them. For a band that took such a bold step with the album download last year, it seems a bit timid, sadly.