With CD sales are falling, and Vinyl sales rising (admittedly not at mass market volumes). The music industry has come up with a new format in to try keep sales up and please everyone. Fightstar is releasing its next single on a disc that is vinyl on one side and a CD on the other. Fightstar’s record company, admits the vinyl-disc is a gimmick but hopes it will capture fans’ imagination. Sounds like fun, but I’m not sure I’d risk my turntable cartridge or CD transport with such a disc.

According to At Ease Web, BBC Radio 4 will be airing a play inspired by Radiohead’s OK Computer.  The play draws on the themes of the classic album.  The play is meant to be broadcast on Friday 19th October in the evening.

Ray Davies revealed today (October 12) that he is to give away his new solo album ‘Working Man’s Cafe’ with the Sunday Times later this month.
In addition to the album’s release as a giveaway on October 21, the singer is also making an additional track ‘Vietnam Cowboys’ available as a free download from this Sunday (October 14) as a taster.

The album will be available to purchase as well from October 29th.

Keane are releasing a single to help raise money for War Child.  The single is ‘The Night Sky’ and will be available exclusively from warchildmusic.com from October 22nd, then digitally from iTunes etc from October 26th, and finally hitting the shops in three different formats on October 29th.

Radiohead have responded to the criticism of the bit rate quality (something I’ve previously blogged about) of the new album’s download according to the NME.  Jonny Greenwood said that the bit rate was better than that offered by iTunes, but not going to be CD quality as that quality is what CDs are for.  Which means if you want In Rainbows at a normal quality then you’ve got to fork out £40! An expectation that I would suggest as somewhat outrageous.

I came across a rather pretty and nicely presented website to music and film fans called liveplasma which provides a rather graphically rich network of associations and style related information (I believe it is exploiting the amazon API for this information).  For an example see the network for Moby on LivePlasma.

I received my Radiohead download instructions in preparation for tomorrows release. I have to say that I’m gutted that the MP3’s will only 160bpm – not the greatest quality in the world. I hope the quality of the music is greater than that of the MP3s.