the shoebox · links
Radiohead links
Where Radiohead lives online now: the band’s own sites, the members’ projects, the fan archives, the tapes and the forums.
the band's own web
Official
- radiohead.com
The official front door. Since January 2020 it opens on the Public Library instead of a puzzle, which for this band counts as a plot twist.
- radiohead.com/library · opened january 2020
The band's own archive, laid out album by album: rare concert and TV footage, B-sides, videos, artwork, out-of-print merchandise. In launch week each member took a turn as librarian, and the library card still prints.
- Dead Air Space archivedarchive.radiohead.com · frozen in 2016
The band's own blog, in its words “the place for sometimes informative updates straight from us”. It stopped mid-sentence: the top of the page is still announcing 2016 tour dates.
- wasteheadquarters.com · since 1991
The W.A.S.T.E. Information Service, older than the web the rest of this page is about, and still where the band’s people post the tour dates and run the mailing list.
- store.wasteheadquarters.com
The official shop: records and merchandise for Radiohead, The Smile, Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Ed O’Brien, Colin Greenwood, Philip Selway and Stanley Donwood. This is where the retired 2003 shop page always pointed.
- waste.wonder4u.jp
The Japanese store, worth knowing about for the pressings and shirts that never leave the country.
- radiohead.bandcamp.com
Where the recent official live releases land, lossless and buyable.
- youtube.com/@Radiohead
The official channel, which holds the videos and full sessions the Public Library points at.
- kida-mnesia.com · 2021
A free download for computer and console that turns the Kid A and Amnesiac artwork into rooms to walk through. Closer to a building than a website.
thirteen sites, ten still standing
The archive maze
Every radiohead.com there has ever been is still sitting on the band's server, numbered. Sites 5, 6 and 11 answer with a 404; the other ten open exactly as they did, which makes this the best-preserved band website on the internet.
- archive.radiohead.com/Site1 · shopocalypse channel
“These pages will hopefully look best on netscape”, optimised for “a 640X480 monitor set at 256 colors”, and signing off with “Watch that phone bill.”
- archive.radiohead.com/Site2 · one sentence
“This is the Radiohead internet site.” That is the whole page.
- archive.radiohead.com/Site3 · under construction
A holding page in wide-spaced capitals: “we will be with you again soon”. To see the old pages it sends you to radiohead.co.uk, and to spend money, to waste.uk.com.
- archive.radiohead.com/Site4 · the address itself
The page says www.radiohead.com and leaves it there.
- archive.radiohead.com/Site7 · the site as a leaflet
The band turned the whole website into one link, out to Friends of the Earth’s climate campaign.
- archive.radiohead.com/Site8 · a radiohead website
Titled exactly that, in lowercase, with a Donwood corridor behind it.
- archive.radiohead.com/Site9 · updated 9/6/03
“An appendix to HAIL TO THE THIEF”: pictures, words, and, in the language of the year, “some stuff in flash too”.
- archive.radiohead.com/Site10 · temporary restraining order
One page apologising that the site is being rebuilt “in a new idiom, inspired by the visions of Mssrs Donwood & Tchock”, with much swearing and untangling of code going on in the potting shed.
- archive.radiohead.com/Site12 · the portal years
Three doors and nothing else: Dead Air Space, W.A.S.T.E., and all other information. The blog above still lives inside this one.
- archive.radiohead.com/Site13 · this is the radiohead website
The last one before the Public Library, and the flattest sentence any band ever put in a title tag.
five people and the sixth
The band, on their own
- thesmiletheband.com · since 2018
Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood with Tom Skinner of Sons of Kemet. Three albums deep, which for a side project is a career.
- tomorrowsmodernboxes.com · since 2014
Thom Yorke’s own site, named after the album he released through BitTorrent when nobody else was.
- philipselway.com
The drummer’s solo home: three records of his own, plus film scores.
- slowlydownward.com
The artist who has made every Radiohead cover since The Bends, and half the visual language this site borrows from. Prints, books and stories, updated at his own pace.
- howtodisappearbook.com · october 2024
Colin Greenwood’s book of photographs of the other four, taken quietly over twenty years, with a long essay of his own alongside them.
- Atoms for Peace archivedatomsforpeace.info · the amok years
Thom’s band with Flea, Nigel Godrich, Joey Waronker and Mauro Refosco. The old address now lands on their shelf in the W.A.S.T.E. store.
- xlrecordings.com
The independent label behind the In Rainbows CD and vinyl, and every Radiohead record since.
only the accounts they actually run
Where they post now
Radiohead attract more convincing fakes than most bands. These are the accounts run by the band, their label or their artist. Jonny Greenwood has no account this site can verify as his, so none is listed.
- instagram.com/radiohead
The band’s account, where tours are announced and the odd unannounced clip turns up.
- instagram.com/thomyorke
Thom, posting rarely and obliquely, which is the correct amount.
- instagram.com/colingreenwood
The bassist and the band’s in-house photographer, joined in 2024 around the book. Opened with pictures of his dogs and a pencil sharpener.
- instagram.com/eobofficial
Ed O’Brien, under the name he records his own music with.
- instagram.com/philipselway
Phil Selway: solo records, scores, and the odd photograph from the road.
- instagram.com/thesmiletheband
The Smile’s own account, and the fastest place to hear about their dates.
- instagram.com/stanleydonwood
New prints, and paintings while they are still being painted. Worth following for someone who has never played the records.
the ones who kept the receipts
Deep archives
Reference sites built by fans, some of them more thorough than anything official.
- citizeninsane.eu · since 2006
“Made in germany. established in 2006.” Every album from the On a Friday days onward, plus the solo work, broken down to sessions, sources and sleeve credits. If a fact about a Radiohead recording is settled anywhere, it is settled here.
- nosuchlibrary.com
A fan-built archive of music, videos, live performances and artwork, with a front door that asks whether you can find what you want in your local library.
- thekingofgear.com
“A site devoted to how Radiohead make all of those funny noises.” Every instrument, pedal, amp and tuning, catalogued per member and kept current through the 2025 tour. Nearly two hundred pages of blog behind it.
- Green Plastic archivedgreenplastic.info · 1997 to 2013
Jonathan Percy started it on his birthday, 26 March 1997, and ran it out of Brooklyn into the biggest US fan site there was. The news desk stopped when Reddit made it feel unnecessary; everything else stayed up on purpose.
- Green Plastic Cold Storage archivedgreenplastic.info/cold-storage · the deep shelf
The best single room of old-web Radiohead material anywhere: scanned print articles, fan art, Ed’s diary, and a facsimile of Lift, an early fan site that would otherwise be gone.
- archive.org/details/radioheadephemera · since 2018
Stephen Cole’s collection, scanned from his own copies: press clippings, press releases, fan-club newsletters, promo postcards and adverts, most of it from the years before anyone kept these things online. A lot of this site’s early news was written from it, and every story that uses one of his scans names him. Thank you, Stephen.
- the-radiohead-almanac.fandom.com
A fan wiki working through every known live recording, show by show.
shows, tapes and setlists
The live record
Where the concert history lives when it is not on this site.
- radiohead-notforprofit.com
Lossless recordings of shows, given away with a simple house rule: “do not buy any bootlegs from anyone. Just share FREELY.” The Smile and the solo tours are in there too.
- archive.org/details/RadioheadHub
The taper tradition, filed properly: audience and soundboard recordings stretching back to the On a Friday years.
- setlist.fm
The crowd-checked setlist database. It is one of the sources behind the songs played on this site’s own show pages.
still talking
Where the conversation went
- ateaseweb.com · since the late 1990s
Adriaan Pels’s news site, and for twenty years the busiest room in the fandom, running at something like twenty thousand visitors a day in the OK Computer and Kid A years. The message board went down in August 2024 and has not come back, but the site is publishing again at the old address: news, tour dates and playlists. This site’s concert history was reconciled against the old gigography, which is in the Internet Archive rather than on the rebuilt site.
- etceteraforum.com · founded 2025
A proper forum, built after At Ease’s board died and laid out with the old board’s sections, down to a room for just chatting. It had tens of thousands of posts by July 2026.
- reddit.com/r/radiohead
The biggest crowd in the fandom now, for better and for worse. Most of the traffic that used to hold up the fan sites ended up here.
reading about all this
Further reading
On the band’s web, and on what fan sites were for in the first place.
- stereogum.com · january 2020
The clearest contemporary write-up of what the band actually put online, the week they did it.
- pastemagazine.com · january 2020
The same week, with more attention to how much of it had never been online.
- greenplastic.info/about · primary source
The founder’s account of hunting for Radiohead lyrics on a 1994 web that had none, and of building the site that fixed it. The best short description of why any of these pages existed.
- cnn.com · october 2024
A photo essay drawn from twenty years inside the band, published around the book.
- rollingstone.com · march 2024
The announcement, with the details of what is in the book.
- carteakey.dev
Another hand-kept index of the same web. It pointed this page at several things worth checking.
gone, and what happened to it
The lost web
The fan sites that closed, and the boards that went down with them, have a room of their own in the shoebox, opened through the Internet Archive.
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A ring needs neighbours
A real webring only goes live when at least three independent fan sites agree to link to one another. If you keep a Radiohead page, archive or forum, mail the webmaster. Until then there is no pretend ring.
A link here has rotted, or a site is missing? Tell me.