Dear Thom, Big Tech isn't the problem
Tech needs to keep commodifying things to keep the share price up, but in doing so they have made all content, including music and newspapers, worthless, in order to make their billions. And this is what we want?
Radiohead front man Thom Yorke in a wide ranging interview with The Guardian:
Having thought they were subverting the corporate music industry with In Rainbows, he now fears they were inadvertently playing into the hands of Apple and Google and the rest. "They have to keep commodifying things to keep the share price up, but in doing so they have made all content, including music and newspapers, worthless, in order to make their billions. And this is what we want?"
That's mostly true, but it's the nature of markets at scale to commodify things and record companies commodified music well before tech companies did!
Over at Digital Music News Paul Resnikoff writes:
And then there's In Rainbows, regarded as an earth-shattering, daring experiment that would change the face of music pricing and access forever. But that was way back in 2007, when digital utopia was still under construction. Radiohead never did it again.
I consider the In Rainbows launch an ingenious marketing stunt rather than the introduction of a new business model.