Radiohead’s Thom Yorke calls Spotify, Rdio unfair to artists, pulls albums

Streaming audio services such as Spotify and Rdio are deeply unfair and “bad for new music”. That’s the view of Radiohead front-man Thom Yorke who has announced that he’s pulling a number of his albums from the service.

As of Sunday, reports the Wall Street Journal, Yorke had pulled down his 2006 solo album “The Eraser”. The band Atoms for Peace, which Yorke also leads, had meanwhile pulled its 2013 album “Amok”.

Nigel Godrich, a member of Atoms for Peace and Radiohead’s producer, took to Twitter to explain the reasoning behind the decision.

The reason is that new artists get paid fuck all with this model.. It's an equation that just doesn't work

— nigel godrich (@nigelgod) July 14, 2013

The music industry is being taken over by the back door.. and if we don't try and make it fair for new music producers and artists…

— nigel godrich (@nigelgod) July 14, 2013

..then the art will suffer. Make no mistake. These are all the same old industry bods trying to get a stranglehold on the delivery system..

— nigel godrich (@nigelgod) July 14, 2013

The numbers don't even add up for spotify yet.. But it's not about that.. It's about establishing the model which will be extremely valuable

— nigel godrich (@nigelgod) July 14, 2013

Meanwhile small labels and new artists can't even keep their lights on. It's just not right

— nigel godrich (@nigelgod) July 14, 2013

As The Verge notes, the profitability of streaming music services has long been a contentious issue. In the past, Spotify has tried to ban record labels for not paying their artists enough, but if small and independent artists are also failing to see results (as Yorke claims), that could well indicate a flaw with the streaming music business as whole.

On its website, Spotify says it pays out royalties based on how popular an artist is on the service. “For example, we will pay out approximately 2% of our gross royalties for an artist whose music represents approximately two percent of what our users stream,” it states. “A popular song or album can generate far more revenue for an artist over time than it historically would have from upfront unit sales.”

That doesn’t seem to fly with Yorke.

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

Image: radioedit (via Flickr).