Radiohead's Thom Yorke Pulls Albums From Spotify In Protest of Low Royalties

First time accepted submitter rpopescu writes "Thom Yorke of Radiohead fame has pulled his solo album 'Eraser' (as well as music made as Atoms for Peace) from the music streaming service Spotify, as a protest at how much it pays the artists. Quote: '"Make no mistake. These are all the same old industry bods trying to get a stranglehold on the delivery system."'"

Comments

Reward the artist

[Hatta]

Reward the artist by going to see a show and buying some merch. Nothing else really gets back to them in any significant amounts.

Re:Reward the artist

[Anonymous Coward]

There is more there then just money, the recording industry wants to keeps it monopoly on music. They are branching out into other countries to rob those artists of there copyrights. If you sign a deal you lose the right to control your own music, companies can re-release songs, or do whatever they want with the music. Obviously this has been talked about already, but they do not want artists to create and actually own there own music, they continue to go after artists with the DMCA take down. Where is the EFF is fighting all of this??

The merch, profits I believe still go to record companies, but your right, money artists make from concerts is there source of revenue. Some bands are not very ggod and because they had a couple of hits (at least in the states) they act as if they reinvented music and are god.

Re:Reward the artist

[Anonymous Coward]

Musicians? That's a hobby, not a profession. If they want to get paid, let them sell t-shirts. Heh heh you'd never catch me dead wearing one of those, but maybe some get-a-lifers would. BTW I downloaded some of their songs and most of them suck. They should THANK ME and PAY ME for listening to that crap they call music. If they recorded something worthwhile I might buy a CD, in fact I did that once seven years ago.

- typical Slashdot post

Re:Reward the artist

[darkitecture]

Reward the artist by going to see a show and buying some merch. Nothing else really gets back to them in any significant amounts.

Although I agree with you wholeheartedly and try to support my favorite artists as much as I can, this is nowhere near as practical for most of the world as one might first think.

One of my closest friends is a mad Dave Matthews Band fan and has been fortunate enough to attend at least four DMB gigs over the past twelve months. I'm sure Dave Matthews and my friend are both pleased as punch about this setup. My favorite artists include amongst others David Bowie and Tom Waits. I live in Japan. Go on and have a guess how many gigs either of them have put on in Japan in the past 12 months.

Now guess how many gigs either of them have put on here in Japan in the past 12 years.

Hint: you could have a nasty accident with a bandsaw and still count them on one hand. Now I'm not faulting the artists or their manager or anybody. That's life unfortunately. Even if my tastes were more mainstream, I still wouldn't come close to being able to see as many concerts as most Americans. I don't see Rihanna or Jay Z or Radiohead hosting many concerts here either. Radiohead hasn't toured here since 1994!

I've seen many of my favorite artists both here and overseas and almost without exception I've gone out of my way to get great (read: expensive) seats because I see great value for money in spending hundreds of dollars in seeing my favorite artists perform live. It's unfortunate for both me and the artists I would be willing to support that I don't live in the continental US or mainland Europe where most concerts seem to be held.

Re:Reward the artist

[Charliemopps]

Where is the EFF is fighting all of this??

They are busy protecting our civil liberties and trying to prevent our country from turning into a police state. Some millionaires making tens of millions instead of hundreds of millions of dollars because of the greed of their corporate owners may not be "just" but I'm betting it's not a real high priority for the EFF.

Re:Reward the artist

[asliarun]

Where is the EFF is fighting all of this??

They are busy protecting our civil liberties and trying to prevent our country from turning into a police state. Some millionaires making tens of millions instead of hundreds of millions of dollars because of the greed of their corporate owners may not be "just" but I'm betting it's not a real high priority for the EFF.

And there's a huge problem with precisely this type of thinking. Bands like Radiohead are trying extremely hard to "do the right thing" - i.e. what they consider fair to themselves and to their audience. We, the listeners, should be trying to prop them up instead of calling sour grapes on them because they happen to be millionaires or whatever. If you like Joe No-Name band that has sold all of 50 albums so far, good for you.

Do remember though that your (and my) media consumption largely consists of authors, bands, movie directors, and artists that have attained some level of commercial success. It is really sad to see initiatives like Radiohead's honor based payment scheme - not be wildly successful. I would actually have loved to see Radiohead make 10 times the money from this experiment than they would have from the record label. Just imagine the message that would have sent - not just to Radiohead but to every other artist and even to us.

Honestly, if Radiohead makes a hundred mil instead of ten mil, I wish him all the very best. Thom Yorke's talent, consistency, and hard work deserves all the money he can get. The concept of money is completely nonsensical when it comes to creative works anyway. Heck, even manufactured products nowadays cost what they cost because of factors that have little to do with their manufacturing cost.

But at the very least, if someone is doing good work in a creative field, they should at least have some level of trust in the fact that they can circumvent the established system with its attendant bloodsucking leeches, and still feel like they are getting the same level of respect, exposure, and money. In fact, it should be a lot more.

Re:Pay the artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

The lazy fucks can tour if they want to earn some dosh from their music.

Pfft. Getting paid for life for 2 weeks' work. How quaint. Move into the 21st century!

The Music Industry must Die!

[MrKaos]

They have fucked over Artists and the IT Industry. Copyright laws that are unequitable, extensible, DRM. WTF makes the Music Companies such a protected species in business anyway? Wasn't capitalism designed to cull business models that were no longer viable?

Seems to me that the existing music business establishment is trying to devise an internet business models that will fuck over music creative types until the end of time.

Spotify's retort

[fatgraham]

http://www.musicweek.com/news/read/spotify-responds-to-thom-yorke-and-nigel-godrich-criticism/055383

Doesn't seem so bad. I think Thom Yorke is missing a step... spotify pays the LABELS. The LABELS obviously decided the royalties from spotify are enough... Perhaps the labels aren't paying artists enough...

Re:Lame Copout

[jedidiah]

> I'm so tired of reading "I help myself to all their stuff but I'll buy their merch". Quit being a freeloader.

"Stop listening to the radio you thieving scum!"

Re:Pay the artists?

[vakuona]

That's like saying Usain Bolt gets paid for running for 10 seconds!