Radiohead Target Audiophiles With HQ FLAC Album

Radiohead will follow up their pay-what-you-like album promotion by choosing only high-quality formats in which to release In Rainbows digitally. The band has extended its relationship with London-based online music retailer 7digital to issue the album online from New Years’ Eve in the FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) format and 320Kbps MP3. The retailer has already enjoyed exclusives on the majority of Radiohead’s back-catalogue material for the last few months after agreeing to make only whole albums and not individual tracks available for download. 7digital claims an exclusive on In Rainbows, too (though Radiohead was this month reported to be talking with iTunes Store), but the band gives way on the individual tracks issue. FLAC albums are £9.99, tracks £1.49; MP3 albums £6.99, tracks £0.99. Radiohead have already shelved their payment-model experiment in readiness for the offline release of In Rainbows. Few artists release material in FLAC, which does not compress songs so benefits from higher quality, appealing to audiophiles.