Radiohead’s distribution experiment, in which customers are invited to pay what they like for the band’s latest album, In Rainbows, in digital form, will be available from tomorrow as 160kbps DRM-free MP3s.
That bitrate is likely to be sufficient for most listeners. 128kbps is sometimes considered the minimum acceptable for reasonable fidelity in MP3. Audiophiles will prefer to purchase the “discbox” which includes a CD, a bonus CD, and vinyl formats, or wait in the hope that a conventional CD release will appear, as it probably will.