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

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

Posted by Unknown on Wednesday July 17, 2013 @12:43AM 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."'"

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Reward the artist by Hatta · 2013-07-17 00:47 · 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 · 2013-07-17 01:14 · 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.
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2. Re:Reward the artist by alexander_686 · 2013-07-17 01:24 · 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.
3. Re:Reward the artist by Charliemopps · 2013-07-17 02:37 · 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.
4. Re:Reward the artist by asliarun · 2013-07-17 03:28 · 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.
Massive sense of entitlement & missing perspec by Idimmu+Xul · 2013-07-17 00:56 · 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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Re:Nice graph by jedidiah · 2013-07-17 00:57 · 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.

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Re:Pay the artists? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-17 01:00 · 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!
Re:Everything in its right place by hawkinspeter · 2013-07-17 01:01 · 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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Re:Great graphic from Information is Beautiful by BenJury · 2013-07-17 01:06 · 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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Re:This is what you get when you mess with us by Idimmu+Xul · 2013-07-17 01:45 · 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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Re:This is what you get when you mess with us by jasenj1 · 2013-07-17 02:30 · Score: 5, Informative

You mean like Bandcamp? - Jasen.