Radiohead open the Radiohead Public Library

Radiohead opened the Radiohead Public Library at Radiohead.com on Monday 20 January, a free archive of their records, films, artwork and ephemera that anyone can enter with a library card. Under the sign-up form, which promises to store no data, the site keeps a librarian's notice. Please don’t run. This is a library.¹⁸

The band's statement explains why they built it. The internet as a whole has never been a reliable resource for detailed or even accurate information re: Radiohead.² The sites that tried have gone dark, it says, and a search now turns up scraps with no artwork or context, and poor videos behind adverts in an order chosen by algorithm. The band announced the library on social media on Monday morning. Radiohead.com has always been infuriatingly uninformative and unpredictable. We have now, predictably, made it incredibly informative.⁵

The shelves hold detailed artwork, the official videos, live and television performances in HD with no adverts, B-sides, out-of-print merchandise made to order, and the playlists the members passed round during the later recording sessions. Early visitors found the three-song “Anyone Can Play Guitar” single of 1993, the first W.A.S.T.E. dispatches from the band's mail-order and fan club, Meeting People Is Easy in full and Inside Out Night, the two-hour Christmas webcast of 2002. Rolling Stone Italia noted what is missing: nothing from before Drill, and none of the members' solo work.

Three rarities went on the streaming services the same day: Drill, the 1992 debut EP; “I Want None of This”, from the 2005 charity compilation Help!: A Day in the Life; and TKOL RMX 8, the 2011 remix EP. It is a month since the band put their albums on YouTube.

For the rest of the week the band are behind the desk. Each of the five is librarian for a day, picking from the archive across the band's social channels, and Colin Greenwood went first.