
Radiohead sells recordings to public after hacker threatens to leak them - LinuxBender
https://www.scmagazine.com/home/security-news/cybercrime/radiohead-sells-recordings-to-public-after-creep-hacker-threatens-to-leak-them/
======
strictnein
It's strange. There's two version of this story going around. Kind of the
mainstream media version, and the version from the "hackers" themselves.

Pitchfork does a good job of following up on the second version, which may be
the more accurate of the two:

[https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/radiohead-fans-vs-black-
marke...](https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/radiohead-fans-vs-black-market-
sellers-the-battle-to-leak-the-ok-computer-tapes/)

[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kA8u6UhjbutZ-b7TXzmX4qkO...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kA8u6UhjbutZ-b7TXzmX4qkOTg6nGC1vPg50WwCcZyo/preview?pru=AAABa23CGUw*zFHssXLEl0f8FTzC_dEQrA)

~~~
alien1993
It's probably because they announced it like this.

[https://www.instagram.com/p/BykT-
NOA6_m/?igshid=6nm3aw87qo8d](https://www.instagram.com/p/BykT-
NOA6_m/?igshid=6nm3aw87qo8d)

~~~
staticautomatic
I am disappointed to learn that Radiohead has an Instagram account.

~~~
and0
Radiohead were pioneers in social media announcements, between the sudden pay-
what-you-want digital release of In Rainbows to, as far as I know, inventing
social media blackout / cryptic profile picture shenanigans.

~~~
staticautomatic
My point is only this: If in 1997 you'd told me that the people who wrote OK
Computer would later be unashamedly using a world-dominating platform built by
fitter happier people whose ambition, I was told, makes them look pretty ugly,
I would not have believed you.

~~~
majormajor
Remember you're talking about a very popular band that was making full use of
90s world-dominating mainstream media platforms that were run by douchebags
then too.

But now we're in Tool territory instead of Radiohead territory
[https://genius.com/Tool-hooker-with-a-penis-lyrics](https://genius.com/Tool-
hooker-with-a-penis-lyrics)

~~~
staticautomatic
Is your point that I shouldn't be surprised because they've always been
hypocrites in this regard?

~~~
dondawest
I’m fully in agreement with you dude. Hypocrisy among artists who take a stand
is hella annoying. It’s like the White Stripes swearing they’d never get a
bass player, only to get a bass player.

They literally made an album describing in detail how technology was bad for
humans and now they are beholden to the same technology they once critiqued.

------
perfunctory
Worth mentioning they are donating all the proceeds to Extinction Rebellion
[https://rebellion.earth/](https://rebellion.earth/)

------
iamben
If anyone is interested, here's a full breakdown of all the minidisks -
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kA8u6UhjbutZ-b7TXzmX4qkO...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kA8u6UhjbutZ-b7TXzmX4qkOTg6nGC1vPg50WwCcZyo/preview)

The (very good) version of 'Lift' that most articles are mentioning is on
[https://radiohead.bandcamp.com/track/md125](https://radiohead.bandcamp.com/track/md125)
and starts at 10:13.

~~~
JimiofEden
This is the version that I was used to, so I was surprised when I saw the
video and it was a slowed down, more melancholic version.

It was my favorite song from the band throughout my adolescence, and the only
way to hear it was through a live bootleg or otherwise. So I thought that this
version of it was just forgotten. Glad to see it is still alive (and makes me
feel like I'm 15 again.)

------
Dowwie
BandCamp has been my primary source for indie music of all genres. It's great
to see Radiohead using this platform to share their work.

One example of a label I would have never known about is Daptone Records, from
NYC. The Budos Band, Sharon Jones, the Frightnrs and many more great artists
have produced really great albums with this label. Sharon died in 2016 but
will live on through her work as an artist and through the label she made as
long as platforms such as BandCamp support it.

~~~
cholula
> Sharon Jones

Amazing woman, I was lucky enough to meet her a few years ago. Charles Bradley
is gone too, they both made some awesome music up to the very end. I didnt
know they were on bandcamp, thanks for that.

------
ErikAugust
Radiohead was quite prolific around this period. The release of OKNOTOK (and
the bootlegs before it) show the band had a bunch of good material that didn’t
make it to OK Computer. And now here we are 20+ years later releasing (or
hacking) more material.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
you speak in past tense. they are still one of the greatest and most
influential artists today.

How Radiohead Writes A Chord Progression:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alt9sQepob4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alt9sQepob4)

Radiohead and the Rhythmic Illusion
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBNvPb331SQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBNvPb331SQ)

How Radiohead use Modes
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEi9ecBRR_4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEi9ecBRR_4)

How Radiohead use Time Signatures
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76q5wv7kMEg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76q5wv7kMEg)

------
marban
On a side note, I miss MiniDisk — It was somewhat of the pinnacle of mixtapes
with best of all worlds. Tangible, digital, compact, non-destructive and
joyfully tedious to create.

~~~
guggle
That was lossy audio compression.

~~~
fb03
Like op said, it compared to a 'mixTAPE'.

Tapes weren't exactly lossless either and pretty lo-fi. With the MiniDisk at
least you reached the 44100hz sampling rate which is adequate to store the
crispness of most tracks.

~~~
jimbo1qaz
44100Hz is sufficient to store any audio signal audible to every human studied
to date (not dogs).

~~~
fb03
Exactly, 44100hz is pretty good and minidisk, while lossy, was way way better
than tapes... hell, even Chrome tapes couldn't properly store frequencies
higher than 16khz.

Anything above 44100hz is just headroom for mixing.

And listening to stuff at 96khz or anything like that is the audiophile
version of buying gold plated hdmi cables.

~~~
ars
> Anything above 44100hz is just headroom for mixing.

No it's not, you're confusing it with how many bits are used.

Once you are above the Nyquist frequency you can perfectly represent the
sample. Any more frequency does absolutely nothing.

But the number of bits of resolution that's what actually determines how
perfectly the digital wave form matches the original.

~~~
fb03
ah, thank you! yes. every bit adds about 6db of headroom right?

~~~
ars
Yes, that's correct.

Wikipedia claims that more than 21 bits is pointless for actual playback since
there are no circuits that can be that accurate (quiet).

But more bit depth can help with mixing headroom - but you don't need a lot.
"24 bits is enough for anyone." © :)

~~~
guggle
Yes, for playback. For some people there's a lot of confusion about bit depth
since it can represent a range of integers (like how the data is stored in a
wav file or what dacs process) or a range of floats.

Internally, audio apps typically represent signals as sequences of 32bit
floats between -1 and +1.

------
necovek
While they are certainly in a rare position to do this, and public story from
their side sounds a bit worse on the leaker, I still have to commend their
approach to it.

Just like I had to get their first album they sold online for pay-as-much-you-
want to show music labels the finger (even though I am not a huge fan of their
music, I am a huge fan of showing the finger to conglomerates that seem to
forget their founding roles).

Sure, that was a move out of privilege too, but not many in that position have
done it anyway, so kudos to them.

~~~
52-6F-62
That was revolutionary for me. I was a poor kid at the time, but a huge fan—so
I was able to pay very little at the time to hear it. I was able to buy it
again later at a fair price.

~~~
SuperNinjaCat
I still feel bad for choosing to pay nothing for In Rainbows while paying a
few bucks for the NIN Ghosts album released around the same time. You can
probably guess which one grew on me the most (that isn't even taking into
account the musical conspiracy theory of the whole 1 by 1 thing/remixing their
own really big album released years before)

~~~
52-6F-62
You know— it seems that’s exactly why they made it PYYC. I grew up on local
music shows like that. Punk and indie and folk stuff.

You’re the target listener in that case. I felt guilty at the time, too. Now
that I’m older I understand.

Don’t feel bad. It was intentional.

------
vmurthy
Fascinating way of gaining the upper hand on your opponents (the "hackers" in
this case). Best of all, the proceeds go to charity. Thank you, blackmailers.
Reminds me of what Bezos did when some dickheads at National Enquirer decided
to blackmail him with disclosing personal data [1]

1: [https://medium.com/@jeffreypbezos/no-thank-you-mr-
pecker-146...](https://medium.com/@jeffreypbezos/no-thank-you-mr-
pecker-146e3922310f)

~~~
analogmemory
Right? This is the best way to make the story a non-issue.

------
ralphstodomingo
A true power move. Not something everyone could do if they were threatened
with the same, though.

~~~
vorticalbox
Seeing as they were never intending to make profit from them any artist in the
same situation could easily do this.

It's pure profit, what is nice to see is that they are giving the profit to
charity. Now that's really not something everyone would do.

------
misiti3780
TLDR: This dump proves the Radiohead purposely scrapped a song (Lift) that was
going to be a hit single because they wanted to change direction with OK
computer.

As a huge radiohead fan, the interesting thing about this dump is that the
version of Lift (disk 15 starting at 9:30, but can also be found in other
places in the dump) is totally mastered and ready to go on the album.

Fans heard this live a long time ago, but when they released the first
recorded version on Lift the b-sides of the Ok Computer 2017, it sounds much
slower.

The band stated that they recorded and mastered Lift in 1997, but they knew it
would be a huge hit single and they didnt want that for OK computer so they
scrapped the whole thing. No one understood this until now.

Other highlights discovered in the dump:

\- Karma Police with different lyrics

\- Longer version of paranoid android

\- Exit Music and True Love Waits used to be the SAME song

~~~
farmerbb
If you're referring to the first song on the first disc, it's a combination of
Exit Music and Life in a Glasshouse.

~~~
misiti3780
yep you are right, it was a typo. thanks

------
taneq
Seems like instead of pursuing legal action they're just waiting for the karma
police to arrest that man.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
Nah, they'll leave him High and Dry. No Surprises, it was top story in The
Daily Mail[1] today. Seriously what a Creep. He must feel really Idioteqe now,
wondering How to Disappear Completely. It'll be a Reckoner, Full Stop.

[1]
[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7129011/Radiohead-r...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7129011/Radiohead-
release-18-hours-unheard-music-raise-money-Extinction-Rebellion.html)

~~~
taneq
I don't care if nobody else appreciates it, _I_ like what you did there.

------
kowdermeister
Wow, this will spark a lot of "amateur" remixes and bootlegs. Nowadays music
technology is very accessible to anyone who's willing to put in some time.

~~~
pcf
One would think so, but if you look at the amount of available multitracks vs
actual fan remixes made with those multitracks... it doesn't seem like people
are very interested in making new mixes of old material.

------
SuperNinjaCat
After reading this I couldn't help but remember an interview with John Lennon
and Yoko Ono (on the BBC world service in 1980) where John was talking about
Phil Spector calling him up after a recording session saying:

 _whispering over the phone_ "John....I've got the tapes...I've got the tapes,
but there are helicopters flying around my house"

It took them a while to get them back from the guy.

------
cm2187
How does a minidisc archive gets "hacked"?

~~~
dagw
Nothing appears to have been hacked. Radiohead sent a bunch of their old
minidisc off to be digitized and someone at the company doing the digitizing
appears to just have made a copy of the files for themselves. What we don't
know is if that was the person that also released the files or if they handed
them off to someone else who then released them.

------
imtringued
I don't really get it. How can a "leaker" have any leverage at all? The type
of person that will stumble on a leak wasn't a customer in the first place.

------
FillardMillmore
If this "hacker" really wanted something lucrative (or possibly fame), they
would find a way to procure Wu-Tang Clan's "Once Upon A Time In Shaolin" \-
the double album they released a single copy of that was bought by Martin
Shkreli. According to Wikipedia, it's the most valuable album of all time.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time_in_Shaolin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time_in_Shaolin)

I won't lie, I'd be quite interested to hear it.

------
jamesb93
Great marketing campaign. Definitely not staged...

~~~
code_scrapping
Assuming you're ironic - do you really think Radiohead needs elaborate ruse to
release their junk tapes? I had the feeling they're doing fine in their own
trippy world. (RH fan, btw)

------
newaccoutnas
Interesting they're not DAT's but Minidisc (given the quality difference)

~~~
toyg
Music people here in Europe liked minidiscs a lot. If the internet had not
happened, that’s probably what we’d be using now.

~~~
cm2187
I don't think the internet killed the minidisc (internet connected devices
only came long after minidiscs were gone). CD-R and flash memory probably did.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
Minidiscs came well after CD-R. They were smaller (as was the portable
player), held more data (lossless songs), and didn’t skip. The MP3 player that
was basically a hard drive with a wheel, and then a phone, killed minidiscs...

~~~
newaccoutnas
That's not quite true: re: lossless

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Transform_Acoustic_Co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Transform_Acoustic_Coding)

------
darkpuma
Media stunt to promote the album? Is there any third party confirmation of
this extortion plot?

~~~
hoolm
I think this is a fair question, how did a hacker steal data off a minidisk
like they claim?

~~~
cuu508
From the pitchfork link in comments:

> Unsurprisingly, Nicholas has a theory about this as well. “The situation
> that makes the most sense to me is that these minidiscs were digitized by a
> third party so the band could choose material from them for the OKNOTOK box
> set, and that someone involved at the third party stole the files and traded
> them,”

~~~
jdsully
Digitized is an odd word choice. I’m pretty sure minidisc was already a
digital format.

~~~
josteink
Yeah. I guess “digital transfer” might be more accurate.

------
_Codemonkeyism
So someone who still a MD now is a hacker instead of a thief?

~~~
adwww
They probably already had access to the files through their work in a studio
or whatnot. Still a thief, but not by literally stealing a physical minidisk
(most likely).

~~~
_Codemonkeyism
The article literally says

"last week stole lead vocalist Thom Yorke’s minidisk archive"

He stole the minidisks.

------
abstractbarista
Wouldn't be surprised if they made the whole thing up. Perhaps they can get
more for the content this way. Nice hype boost.

~~~
joezydeco
Did you miss the part where they are donating all the proceeds to charity?

~~~
abstractbarista
No, that's part of my point. They are potentially extracting more value out of
something than they otherwise could have.

Also, surely they love being strewn across the news over this. Good publicity!

------
jamisteven
"For just 18 days, the band is making the sessions available via the online
music service Bandcamp for a price tag of £18. “So for £18 you can find out if
we should have paid that ransom,” joked Greenwood."

So instead of them paying the hacker 150k, they'll make a few million.
Brilliant.

~~~
jmmcd
A few million they are donating to Extinction Rebellion.

