Yorke to musicians: don’t let the labels rob you

David Byrne interviews Thom Yorke on the future of music in the latest Wired. Some interesting tidbits from the Radiohead front-man.

Byrne: Are you making money on the download of In Rainbows?

Yorke: In terms of digital income, we’ve made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever — in terms of anything on the Net. And that’s nuts. It’s partly due to the fact that EMI wasn’t giving us any money for digital sales.

Byrne: What advice do you have for bands that are just getting started?

Yorke: Well, first and foremost, you don’t sign a huge record contract that strips you of all your digital rights, so that when you do sell something on iTunes you get absolutely zero. That would be the first priority. If you’re an emerging artist, it must be frightening at the moment. Then again, I don’t see a downside at all to big record companies not having access to new artists, because they have no idea what to do with them now anyway.

As unsigned artists (both new undiscovered artists and recently liberated big acts) take Yorke’s advice to dis-intermediate the big labels, it will cause a sea change in the music industry’s value chain. The four major labels control most of the revenue in that business (90% by some measures). It’s theirs to lose…. and lose they will.

December 22, 2007 | Filed Under Uncategorized 

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