Radiohead’s In Rainbows - Good Album, Terrible User Experience

A couple of weeks ago the esteemed Mr. Wallz mentioned that Radiohead was giving their next album away for free - sort of. The deal is that you can pay any amount you want for the MP3 version, from $0 on up. They are not going through iTunes or Amazon or anyone else and are selling direct from the album’s website.

I went, I bought, I listened. The verdict? Good album, incredibly terrible website. Seriously, the site looks and acts like something that crawled from the depths of 1998, escaping some doomed graphic artist’s college portfolio and wreaking havok on unsuspecting downloaders everywhere.

Here’s a screenshot of the registration screen. Too many fields, and too many required fields. Do they really need my mobile phone number?

Radiohead needs to know your personal details

Yes, the entire web site looks like that. It’s like someone asked their 4-year old to draw a rainbow in Microsoft Paint and then saved and re-saved it as a jpeg 100 times.

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Free Radiohead!

That’s right Radiohead are giving away their next album for free. Well not exactly Radiohead no longer are signed to a major record label and have decided to sell their new album online. You can choose to download it or purchase the more expensive boxed set. What makes the download different from other sites is that you can choose how much you want to pay for the album. So if you want to you can download the album for free.

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