Photo: wenn
Thom Yorke has slammed Google and Youtube, comparing the way they handle money within the music industry to being 'like Nazi Germany'.
The Radiohead frontman made headlines by releasing his latest solo album Tomorrow's Modern Boxes via BitTorrent last year - reportedly adding around $20million to his networth in profits made from the record.
Taking a break from his 2015 tour, and in a further act of defiance to mainstream digital giants, Yorke given a scathing interview with La Repubblica - saying "I definitely don't use Youtube."
Speaking about the use of app Adblocker, Yorke said: "The funny thing is that YouTube has said 'that's not fair'. You know? They say it's not fair – the people who put adverts in front of any piece of content, making a load of money, while artists don't get paid or are paid laughable amounts – and that seems fine to them. But if they don't get a profit out of it, it's not fair."
He continued: "I don't have the solution to these problems. I only know that they're making money with the work of loads of artists who don't get any benefit from it.
"People continue to say that this is an era where music is free, cinema is free. It's not true. The creators of services make money – Google, YouTube. A huge amount of money, by trawling, like in the sea – they take everything there is. 'Oh, sorry, was that yours? Now it's ours. No, no, we're joking – it's still yours'. They've seized control of it – it's like what the Nazis did during the Second World War. Actually, it's like what everyone was doing during the war, even the English – stealing the art of other countries. What difference is there?"
Photo: Vinvent Arbalet
Speaking of the matter of physical vs digital music, Yorke added: "Recently I got out all the vinyl that I had," he said. "Stuff collected over a lifetime... with every single vinyl there's a relationship. Like when I'm DJing: there's this direct contact, you have to take the disc, choose it, put it in a bag, and put the bags in the taxi and then you have to get them down, open them and so on. That relationship doesn't exist with digital files, USB sticks. And that has a corrosive effect on how music is made."
This comes after Yorke recently accused Tony Blair's advisers of attempting to blackmail him in a discussion over climate change.
