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Building it up and breaking it down (Or when Thom Yorke flaps his wings) Nude (Make Your Own Remix)

In another boldly creative interaction with piles of able and active listeners, Radiohead is offering up an entirely new "album" (and concept) on iTunes. Again preempting the sonic pirate, Radiohead is offering up the fruits of its labor for download, but this time with an open invitation and organized competition to remix the track "Nude" featured on In Rainbows. Those interested can buy up the stems, use other beats, pieces, and parts, slice, dice, speed up, slow down, tweak or reinvent the entire track. The new creator names and uploads the Frakentune onto Radiohead's website and then visitors can vote for their favorites. The voting ends May 1st and what lay ahead for the winner is unpublished, but according to the website the group "will listen to the best remixes," which seems to be enough incentive. The cross-marketing and artistic collaboration is sheer genius. Radiohead's website directs users straight to iTunes to purchase the "Nude" package that includes stems for the bass, drum, guitar, string fx, and voice, along with the original cut of the track from In Rainbows -- Apple is even offering a GarageBand file of the song for those who buy the Nude (Make Your Own Remix) album by April 8th. Each stem costs just as much as the completed track, so the six-piece remix set totals out to around six dollars. As usual Radiohead's financial interests, artistic prowess, and genuine communication with listeners coincide with forceful marketing genius that has a way of revolutionizing the music industry. The album has been available for download for less than a week and already 730 participants have posted remixes and thousands of visitors have cast votes – as of this moment, Holy Fuck's is the most popular.

-Alix Dunn 4/29/08