Why Radiohead's Thom Yorke is pulling out of Spotify
"Someone gotta say something. It's bad for new music"
Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, who in February said Google and Apple made music "worthless in order to make their billions," has lodged a new complaint against the digital distribution of music. Yorke and longtime Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich have pulled some of their side projects, including Atoms for Peace album AMOK, from Spotify, one of the leading music-streaming sites.
The reason, as Godrich put it: "New artists get paid f*** with this model."
In a solid 12-Tweet rant on Sunday, Godrich elaborated:
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Godrich isn't the first musician to bemoan Spotify's pay equation. In 2012, Brooklyn band Grizzly Bear tweeted they were paid just $10 for 10,000 plays of their tracks, and singer-songwriter Erin McKeown told National Public Radio her pay averaged out to less than half of one cent per play.
For the uninitiated, Spotify sells subscriptions to its 20 million-plus song library, not individual songs. It makes money two ways: From the six million subscribers who pay a fee each month (it's $9.99 for the premium package in the U.S.), and from brands that advertise against Spotify's free service, which results in ads being interspersed between songs like on the radio. Spotify claims on its site to pay out the majority of the revenue — "approaching 70 percent" — to publishers, labels, artists, and performing rights societies.
Spotify keeps the exact nature of the agreements secret, but explains this much:
It's easy to see how popular artists bank, and emerging artists get burned.
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Despite all the protest, Spotify's model has its supporters — beyond the subscribers who can cheaply explore every music genre to their hearts' content. This spring, What Culture's Thom Bruce argued that Spotify may be helping the music industry grow again, for the first time in over a decade.
Spotify responded delicately (and rather vaguely) to Yorke and Godrich's protest. "Right now we’re still in the early stages of a long-term project that’s already having a hugely positive effect on artists and new music," Spotify told Tech Crunch. "We’ve already paid $500 million to rights holders so far and by the end of 2013 this number will reach $1 billion. Much of this money is being invested in nurturing new talent and producing great new music."
Carmel Lobello is the business editor at TheWeek.com. Previously, she was an editor at DeathandTaxesMag.com.
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