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

Posted by Unknown on from the world-not-missing-much dept.

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."'"

24 of 301 comments (clear)

  1. Reward the artist by Hatta · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

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    1. Re:Reward the artist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Reward the artist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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

    3. Re:Reward the artist by alexander_686 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I will say no to that for 2 reasons.

      First, there is music that I want to listen to that does not travel well. Sometimes the original artist is dead. Sometimes, like “Einstein on the Beach” – is a 5 hour beast which requires symphony, singers, narrator, choir, and dances. It’s done about once every 10 years or so. I worked with the tour manager. Kind of fascinating on how much work it took for a performance.

      Back to the point. Some things travel better than other. It is easier to tour with a girl and a guitar then to tour with a four piece band, which is easier to tour then something that has a brass section.

      Second I live in fly over land so shows are far and few between. And when I want to spend my money I want to spend it on music – not another t-shirt – I have too many already.

      The problem is that the internet has shifted more power to the consumers and away from the producers – be they artists or record companies. Complaining that the record companies are taking a too large slice of the pie does not address the issue of the shrinking pie.

    4. Re:Reward the artist by darkitecture · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    5. Re:Reward the artist by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

      This.

      I read an interview with Mick Jagger on the BBC website a few years ago and the BBC interviewer asked him about MP3 and digital downloads, figuring that Mick would likely be a stuffy old guy who would rail about how MP3s were killing music and so. Was the interviewer ever mistaken! Mick stated that for the majority of his career the Stones had actually not made all that much money from recordings. He said that there were exceptions in the late 80s into the 90s when labels actually were paying the artists a lot of money, but from his perspective MP3s hadn't changed anything and the Stones made their real money off touring. He said he had no problem with digital downloads. In fact, the Stones long ago got on iTunes and they offer special downloads of selected old concerts on a website they run. Sadly, it's somewhat younger artists like U2 who just do not get it at all and continue to bitch about how things are not what they once were.

    6. Re:Reward the artist by tbuddy · · Score: 4, Funny

      I've always heard that Tom Waits was Big in Japan.

    7. Re:Reward the artist by Charliemopps · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    8. Re:Reward the artist by asliarun · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  2. Pay the artists? by smooth+wombat · · Score: 4, Funny

    Is this guy nuts? Who gets paid for their work? Just steal it from TPB or someplace else.

    Pfft. Getting paid for their work. How quaint. Move into the 21st century!

    --
    We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
    1. Re:Pay the artists? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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!

    2. Re:Pay the artists? by vakuona · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

  3. Great graphic from Information is Beautiful by blarkon · · Score: 4, Informative
    http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/

    I believe since the graphic was made, there has been extensive lobbying for royalties per play to be reduced from the figures shown in this picture. There's something to the original musician's case if it takes more than 4 million plays per month to get to one individual's *minimum wage* of $1160 per month (and that's with the *generous* current pay per play rate).

    1. Re:Great graphic from Information is Beautiful by BenJury · · Score: 5, Informative

      What's really impressive is how much more the label takes. For Spotify: 0.16c to the label, 0.029c for the artist. (~85%/15% split) That's a huge chunk for something that someone else is distributing etc.

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  4. Massive sense of entitlement & missing perspec by Idimmu+Xul · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Nearly 90% of the artists who get a cheque for digital play receive less than $5,000 a year

    Technically I think that's pretty good, isn't it? Write some songs, receive residual income whilst you do nothing else for the rest of the delivery platforms life. Win win.

    What none of these reports seem to show is any perspective on how much the delivery service (Pandora/Spotify) is making. (Raising IPO capital isn't exactly making a profit..)

    If (without creative accounting) they're breaking even, then the artists are getting paid too much.

    If they're running at a loss, then the artists are definitely getting paid too much.

    If they're reaping in huge profits then the artists aren't getting paid enough.

    That kind of transparency isn't available (or I haven't seen it).

    Either way I'd quite like $5000 for work I did last year.

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  5. Re:Nice graph by jedidiah · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Spotify pays up. It's the labels that aren't sharing.

    Internet streaming services shouldn't be expected to pay any more per head than any other form of "broadcast" out there. If you put all of this stuff out of business, you will have NO ONE to help promote the talent.

    You'll be trapped in a vaccuum where no one can here you b*tch and moan and whine.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  6. Re:Everything in its right place by hawkinspeter · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yes, but you must be forgetting the stringent editing process that all SlashDot articles have to go through.

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  7. The Music Industry must Die! by MrKaos · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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.

    --
    My ism, it's full of beliefs.
  8. Spotify's retort by fatgraham · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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...

  9. Re:Just Listen on Youtube by Skarecrow77 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Spotify's "basic" quality is Q5 Vorbis, which is roughly equivalent to VBR mp3 in the 192kbps range (only with better handling of edge cases than mp3). i.e. virtually transparent to most listeners on most equipment. Spotify's premium quality is Q9 vorbis, which is, well, complete overkill. Even more pointless than 320kbps cbr mp3.

    Youtube's "basic" quality is shit. Youtube's premium quality is... is there even such a thing?

    Don't misunderstand me, I find out about songs often though youtube, but then I go load the tune up on spotify to actually enjoy the music.

  10. Re:This is what you get when you mess with us by Idimmu+Xul · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From memory Radiohead and NIN have both offered albums, available online where you can pay what you want for them, and both walked away with over $1million.

    Unless there's some crazy contract shenanigans going on, I really don't see why some of the bigger artists don't pull a Valve and create their own content delivery platform that is fair for the artist, fair for the consumer and criticism free.

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  11. Re:This is what you get when you mess with us by jasenj1 · · Score: 5, Informative

    You mean like Bandcamp? - Jasen.

  12. Re:This is what you get when you mess with us by dcollins · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Like United Artists Corporation, now part of MGM.

    By which I mean to say that endeavors that start like this wind up being "captured" over time by industry managers anyway. To keep that from happening you'd need some kind of clever artist-ownership arrangement, maybe a bit like the Vanguard Group or TIAA-CREF.

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  13. Re:Lame Copout by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Insightful

    > 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!"

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.