Thom Yorke Dissing The Album Format Doesn't Mean 'Free' Business Models Don't Work

Too Much Free Time

from the ok... dept

I believe that one of our frequent critics has been submitting a series of stories which s/he believes “disproves” the basics of what we talk about here. I don’t know for sure that it’s the same individual, as they always use different names, but the names are all of the same nature, and the comments are effectively the same mocking tone — often included with a claim along the lines of “you’ll never post this because it shows you’re wrong.” Later the same person (again, this is an assumption, but one with a high probability) has been posting comments insisting that “Mike always ignores my submissions because they prove he’s wrong.” The thing is, that’s clearly not true. If you hadn’t noticed, I often post stories suggesting something I’ve written about may not be true (and in some cases, I’d love to be proven wrong). The problem is that when you break down the stories, they don’t prove anything of the sort. And, with this particular critic, s/he’s either so incredibly misread the story or misunderstood what we wrote about, they didn’t seem worth posting.

But since the onslaught continues, I figure why not spend one (and only) one post responding to two such recent submissions to explain. The first was the fact that, back at Bonnaroo, Trent Reznor announced to the crowd that it was Nine Inch Nails’ last US show ever. The critic seemed to think this was proof that Reznor’s brand of connecting with fans & giving them a reason to buy was a failure. Except… someone hadn’t been paying much attention. First, the news wasn’t new at all. Reznor had stated well before the tour even began that he was putting Nine Inch Nails on hold after the tour, but that he would continue with a variety of other musical projects. He also announced this same fact at other shows on the tour. The final statement was hardly anything new or anything of note. It certainly wasn’t a sign that Reznor’s efforts were a failure, but that he wanted to try something new — a point he’d been making for quite some time. (Also, it’s worth noting that since then, Reznor decided to do a few more NIN shows in the US, as he felt that Bonnaroo and the NIN/JA tour weren’t the best way to go out).

The latest is a similar misreading, with a similarly misguided “nyah, nyah” comment from the critic. In this case, he pointed out that The Sun (hardly a standard for journalistic excellence) is reporting that Thom Yorke of Radiohead is saying the band doesn’t want to do any new albums. Again, as with the statement above, this is not a new thing. Hell, just last week we linked to an interview with Yorke where he said the same thing. But, again, this critic seems to be confusing the fact that Yorke doesn’t want to produce a certain product (“the album”) with the idea that the In Rainbows experiment was a failure.

But that’s not what Yorke is saying at all. In fact, Yorke has been complaining about the album format for some time. But that’s a complaint about the format itself, not any sort of statement on whether or not In Rainbows was a success (which all the data shows it was a huge success). Furthermore, even the fact that Yorke wants to do something different doesn’t mean the original experiment was a failure. Hell, in the very link this critic sent (the one above), Yorke states that In Rainbows was a success as an album. On top of that, in an interview last year, Yorke pointed out that it makes no sense to just keep doing the same thing, and even if they did another album, they wouldn’t use the same method, because it had been done already, and they wanted to do something new. He was realizing, correctly, that you get more bang for your buck by doing new stuff, not just repeating the same old thing.

Nowhere does Yorke say that he won’t still be producing music, or that they won’t come up with new and innovative business models. But that he just doesn’t like the album format. This is something a lot of artists agree with, and is hardly a condemnation of the original experiment.

There have been a few other submissions along these same lines, but rest assured, if I’m not posting your submissions (and we get about 50 to 100/day, and we only have so much time to write up stories), it’s not because you’ve somehow “proved me wrong.” It might be because the stories you submit don’t actually say what you think they say… or… well… anything interesting at all.

Filed Under: business models, economics, free, thom yorke, trent reznor