On the fifth anniversary of the launch of streaming music service Spotify, Radiohead and Atoms for Peace frontman Thom Yorke has reignited a torch of hostility against the company, describing it to Mexican website Sopitas as “the last desperate fart of a dying corpse”.
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“I feel like as musicians we need to fight the Spotify thing. I feel that in some ways what’s happening in the mainstream is the last gasp of the old industry. Once that does finally die, which it will, something else will happen,” Yorke explained, lamenting the service’s cozy relationship with major labels, which are looking for any new profit angles while desperately clinging to failing revenue models. “But it’s all about how we change the way we listen to music, it’s all about what happens next in terms of technology, in terms of how people talk to each other about music, and a lot of it could be really fucking bad.”
Earlier this year, Atoms for Peace pulled its music from Spotify and other streaming services, with Yorke and bandmate Nigel Godrich vilifying the lead streaming service on Twitter. Yorke went on to compare Spotify to what Radiohead did on the 2007 release of their In Rainbows album, releasing it on their own and asking fans to pay what they wanted for it.
“When we did the In Rainbows thing what was most exciting was the idea you could have a direct connection between you as a musician and your audience. You cut all of it out, it’s just that and that. And then all these fuckers get in a way, like Spotify suddenly trying to become the gatekeepers to the whole process,” said Yorke. “We don’t need you to do it. No artists needs you to do it. We can build the shit ourselves, so fuck off. But because they’re using old music, because they’re using the majors… the majors are all over it because they see a way of re-selling all their old stuff for free, make a fortune, and not die.”
Despite the increasing trend toward streaming rather than physical media, Yorke doesn’t see a promising future for streaming, but rather sees it as a step towards the new industry model. “To me this isn’t the mainstream, this is is like the last fart, the last desperate fart of a dying corpse. What happens next is the important part,” he told Sopitas. “It’s like this mind trick going on, people are like ‘with technology, it’s all going to become one in the cloud and all creativity is going to become one thing and no one is going to get paid and it’s this big super intelligent thing’. Bullshit.”
Listen to the full interview below.
Photo: Johnny Firecloud
