A few Radiohead tracks quietly made there way onto Spotify this week, closing out the slow march toward having the band’s entire discography available on the streaming service. Normally, this wouldn’t be news to anyone outside of the few mega-fans dying to hear “These Are My Twisted Words” and “Harry Patch (In Memory Of)” on their preferred music service. But given Thom Yorke’s dicey history with streaming — and Spotify, in particular — it’s interesting to see that the band have fully given their music over to the company.
Yorke railed against Spotify back in 2013, citing the success of his band’s self-released In Rainbows as proof that the company was unnecessary. He went on to say that the service is a way for record labels to avoid their own death by making money off of old music.
“We don’t need you to do it. No artists needs you to do it. We can build the sh*t ourselves, so f*ck 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. That’s why to me, Spotify the whole thing, is such a massive battle, because it’s about the future of all music. It’s about whether we believe there’s a future in music, same with the film industry, same with books.”
He went on to call Spotify and the move toward streaming “the last desperate fart of a dying corpse.” Much in the same way that they did with “Creep”, however, it looks like Radiohead have finally relented to the pressure and made themselves available to their fans.
