jbarker7

As for Radiohead, I am getting a real kick out of the backlash. The same bloggers who breathlessly invented the "smashing the industry" angle to suit their Net as center-of-the-universe world view are now bitching about the band releasing the music through traditional channels as though it is a sneaky betrayal. Whatever keeps the snark train running full steam ahead, I suppose.

Covebum

Radiohead aren't a bunch of nonces who just woke up on this side of the tea kettle. They're just still living, perhaps due to the nature of believing one's own press, in a time when these kinds of deals still take place. That's unfortunate for everyone. I don't feel sorry one bit for EMI, but their mutual inflexibiity on bargaining this out has to weigh heavy somewhere.

loudersoft

I'm actually going to back EMI, a little, on this one -- and I speak as someone who loves In Rainbows, put it in my Top Five for the year, etc.

The reason a label like EMI caves into the re-upping demands of a midcareer act like Radiohead who are critically acclaimed and sell pretty well but, frankly, aren't Celine Dion in the global sales dept., is cred. And it almost never works.

The signal example is R.E.M. in 1995. They re-signed to Warners at the height of Monster to a ~$80m deal even the company itself knew would never pay off -- but all the stories in Billboard at the time had Warner insiders saying, We needed to keep them to show other acts we're committed to our artists. I.e., a moral victory. But if Warners was expecting a loss leader they could be proud of, they got more (or less) than they bargained for from Stipe & co.: first album under the new pact was the very respectable but piss-poor-selling New Adventures in Hi-Fi; and everything after the post-Bill Berry era sold ever-worse. True, the deal probably didn't cost Warners $80m in the end (that figure was likely premised on certain sales targets), but it accomplished next to nothing, either commercially or in terms of perception of the company: just six years later, Wilco was wrestling to get off Warners for shitting on their most acclaimed album (and then re-signing to a Warner subsidiary, but nevermind).

Bottom line, even in flusher times, signing Radiohead as loss-leaders, with (let's face it) most of their best work probably behind them, wouldn't have made much sense. In the current environment, it was likely totally untenable.

Chris Molanphy

Al Shipley

Is that Guy Hands in our pocket? (Will always sound like a Lake Woebegone name to me!)

okiedoke

mike a

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Ned Raggett

Juancho

Ned Raggett

God, I need a drink.

Dickdogfood

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