Kid A - Marketing and Release

Marketing and Release

After completing the record, the band, with their label, drew up a marketing plan. One EMI executive praised the music but described "the business challenge of making everyone believe" in it. However, there was considerable media interest; Kid A was described as "the most highly anticipated rock record since Nirvana's In Utero". According to Ed O'Brien, the marketing campaign aimed to dispel hype about the new album.

By the late 1990s, Radiohead and their fans had a large Internet presence. As a result, Parlophone (UK) and Capitol Records (US) marketed the album in an unconventional way, promoting it partly through the Internet. Short films called "blips", set to the band's music, were distributed freely online and were shown between programmes on music channels. Capitol created the "iBlip", a Java applet that could be embedded into fan sites, allowing users to pre-order the album and listen to streaming audio before its release. No advance copies were circulated, but the album was played under carefully controlled conditions for critics and at listening parties for fans, and it was previewed in its entirety on MTV2.

In a departure from music industry practice, Radiohead decided not to release any official singles from Kid A, although "Optimistic" and promotional copies of several other tracks received some radio play. Yorke explained the decision was not made for reasons of "artistic credibility", but because "the stress of getting into that area at the time was too much, and perhaps too misrepresentive". After the attention for OK Computer had brought him to breakdown, Yorke was hesitant to launch Kid A with too much publicity. He wrote on Radiohead's website: "coming back into the lions den was not easy, especially for me personally. it meant bringing back ghosts that made me shut down in the first place. so a lot of the decisions we made and what we chose to do was to avoid the normal giant cogs turning and crushing." He regretted the decision to release no singles in retrospect, as "it meant the only judgement of our music was being made too much by critics opinions, which was ok and everything but there is nothing like the excitement of hearing on the radio."

The band made a brief tour of Mediterranean countries in early summer 2000, playing their new songs live for the first time. By the time the album's title was announced in mid-2000, concert bootlegs were being shared on the peer-to-peer service Napster. Colin Greenwood said, "We played in Barcelona and the next day the entire performance was up on Napster. Three weeks later when we got to play in Israel the audience knew the words to all the new songs and it was wonderful." A month before its release, the finished album appeared on Napster. In response, Yorke said "it encourages enthusiasm for music in a way that the music industry has long forgotten to do." Estimates suggested Kid A was downloaded without payment millions of times before its worldwide release, and some expected weaker sales.

European sales slowed on 2 October 2000, the day of official release, when 150,000 faulty CDs were recalled by EMI. However, Kid A debuted at number one in the album charts in the UK, US, France, Ireland, New Zealand and Canada. It was the first US number one in three years for any British act, and Radiohead's first US top 20 album. Some have suggested peer-to-peer distribution may have helped sales by generating word-of-mouth. Others credited the label for creating hype. However, the band believed measures against early leaks may not have allowed critics (who were supposed to rely on the CD copies) time to make up their minds.

In late 2000, the band toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos, playing mostly new songs. Radiohead also performed three concerts in North American theatres, their first in nearly three years. The small venues sold out rapidly, attracting celebrities, and fans who camped all night. In October the band appeared on Saturday Night Live. The footage shocked some viewers who expected rock songs, with Jonny Greenwood playing electronic instruments, the in-house brass band improvising over "The National Anthem", and Yorke dancing spasmodically and stuttering in "Idioteque". Radiohead went to the US just after Kid A's chart-topping debut and according to O'Brien, "Americans love success, so if you've got a Number One record they really, really like you." Yorke said "We were The Beatles, for a week."