About the Radioheads

The ever belligerent Gruber recently took Fortune to task for ranking the way Radiohead marketed In Rainbows as the the 59th Dumbest Moment in Business (this year, I guess). And I completely agree that the $3 million (approx. -- and let's face it, with that kind of money you can afford not to count every penny) is a substantial vindication of the strategy. But I think that it's a very big mistake for pundits to project their big-business-is-screwing-the-artist-so-let's-all-go-indie ideals onto this band, or to mistake their actions for anything other than cynical self-serving greed.

This story (saying that Radiohead flounced* out on EMI when they didn't get the $10 million advance they wanted) appeared in The Times last week. Now, I'll say right now that it's probably mostly a smear piece planted by disgruntled EMI executives, but I'm sure that there's at least a big enough grain of truth somewhere in there to stop it being libellous. Let's compare this to Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails (I've heard of them, but I've never heard any of their music) telling their Australian fans to steal their music because the record companies were ripping them off by setting the price of their CDs unfairly high. Back to Radiohead, who let their fans pay whatever they thought In Rainbows was worth, right? Sure. Unless they were real fans, in which case they wouldn't have settled for less than the super-snazzy boxed set, a snip at only £40...

So I guess the take home point is that, yes, as all right-thinking people have known for a while now, the music industry is really screwed up, with talent largely being ignored and those few "lucky" individuals who make it through getting themselves exploited and ripped-off, but don't go looking to Oxford's finest to sort it out.

[* Go on, sit back, close your eyes and try to imagine Thom Yorke flouncing. If that doesn't make you smile than nothing will.]