There aren’t many musicians with enough cash to spare to challenge music streaming service Spotify, which is notorious in the industry for the low fees it pays to artists.
Props, then, to Radiohead singer Thom Yorke, who announced via Twitter yesterday evening that he and producer Nigel Godrich were pulling some of their music off Spotify in protest against the service’s policy of paying ‘f*ck all’, as Godrich delicately put it.
Godrich’s explanation is too lengthy to quote in full (you can see the full rant here), but Yorke was more pithy:
Make no mistake new artists you discover on #Spotify will no get paid. meanwhile shareholders will shortly being rolling in it. Simples.
— Thom Yorke (@thomyorke) July 14, 2013
Trouble is, in comparison to Yorke’s multi-platinum-selling Radiohead albums, the stuff the pair has chosen to pull is a bit… marginal. Godrich said the pair were taking ‘Eraser and Amok and Ultraista’ off Spotify – two of which are side projects of Yorke’s, the other is Godrich’s pet project. It isn’t exactly going to hurt Spotify on the same scale as if Yorke decided to pull, say, OK Computer.
Still, Yorke reckons it’ll be enough to make the corporate evil-doers at Spotify sit up and listen:
"your small meaningless rebellion is only hurting your fans ... a drop in the bucket really" No we're standing up for our fellow musicians
— Thom Yorke (@thomyorke) July 14, 2013
Go on, Thom. You stick it to the man.
- Image credit: Flickr/angela n
