Robert Smith Calls Radiohead Idiots?
At this point, I’m hard-pressed to think of bands that haven’t verbally bashed Radiohead since their online release of In Rainbows. The Hold Steady didn’t understand “all those buttons and sequencers,” Noel Gallagher claimed they’ve been “making the same record since Kid A” (try to control your LOL on that one), and Trent Reznor felt their no-artwork download was “insincere.” Basically, Googling “disses Radiohead” will pull up a plethora of articles about everyone from U2’s manager to Robert freaking Plant.
But Why? What’s the point of pigeon-holed musicians (no offense to any of these artists, but c’mon Oasis) criticizing the evolution of one of the most innovative and critically acclaimed bands in music? Robert Smith finally simplified it for us.
“The Radiohead experiment of paying what you want – I disagreed violently with that. The idea that the value is created by the consumer is an idiot plan. You can’t allow other people to put a price on what you do, otherwise you don’t consider what you do to have any value at all and that’s nonsense. If I put a value on my music and no one’s prepared to pay that, then more fool me, but the idea that the value is created by the consumer is an idiot plan, it can’t work.”
The physical release of Radiohead’s In Rainbows, which came out 4 months after everyone had already downloaded it for any price they wanted, went on to #1 on the US and UK Album Charts. Truth be told, I think it works fine if the album is great. At least Smith was honest about what was really bothering him. Not sure why he chose to speak up about this now, but surely it has something to do with the fact that 4:13 Dream was never #1.
If there’s anything that the mixtape revolution has proven, it’s that releasing stuff for free actually helps your career. A few months ago, I wrote about the no-label ‘pay what you want’ strategy, and concluded that this wouldn’t work for unknown artists. I was wrong. Pretty soon this will stretch beyond the hip hop community, where you can land a deal with Kanye West as an unknown rapper based on one free release. Even Grammy winning Lil Wayne made a name for himself by releasing a shit-ton of free material, and keeps himself on the radar by putting out free mixtapes between major label albums.
Radiohead draws criticism of their music not because their music is bad, but because they have single-handedly tipped the scale in favor of free music. If artists like Robert Smith aren’t willing to get on board, they will be left behind.
That would be the idiot plan.
Posted: February 24th, 2009 under Poprok Rants.
Tags: pay what you want, Radiohead, Robert Smith