When The Cure’s Robert Smith “violently disagreed” with Radiohead
Towards the end of the 2000s, the music industry was going through a state of flux. Typically, Radiohead and The Cure find themselves on the same page, but one decision by the experimental Oxford rockers unsettled Robert Smith, who “violently disagreed” with them.
Before Spotify arrived, millions of music fans illegally downloaded albums regularly, leaving the industry quivering in their boots. With 2007’s In Rainbows, Radiohead thought outside of the box with their release strategy and decided to release it for free online, allowing fans to pay what they wanted for the record.
At the time, the five-piece were heavily praised for their approach, but they also had a smattering of critics. However, they released a physical edition of the album too, which topped the charts in both the United States and the United Kingdom.
Their most vocal critic was surprisingly Robert Smith from The Cure, who told Music Radar in 2009: “The Radiohead experiment of paying what you want – I disagreed violently with that. You can’t allow other people to put a price on what you do, otherwise you don’t consider what you do to have any value at all, and that’s nonsense. If I put a value on my music and no one’s prepared to pay that, then more fool me, but the idea that the value is created by the consumer is an idiot plan, it can’t work.”
Following his harsh criticism of one of the most beloved bands on the planet who valiantly tried to realign the music industry, Smith was condemned by their fanbase. The Cure frontman took it upon himself to elaborate on his comments and explain it wasn’t exclusively about Radiohead, but they were the most high-profile example of this strategy.
In a blog post, Smith wrote: “THESE IDIOT CRITICS HAVE TRIED VERY HARD TO TURN MY GENERAL POINT – A POINT I MADE USING RADIOHEAD’S ‘IN RAINBOWS: PAY WHAT YOU WANT’ MARKETING RUSE AS IT IS THE MOST WIDELY KNOWN EXAMPLE – INTO A MOCK SHOCK HORROR “HOW DARE ANYONE QUESTION THE FAMOUSLY INDEPENDENT AND ANTI-CAPITALIST RADIOHEAD, THEY SELL MORE ‘PRODUCT’ THAN THE CURE SO THEIR STRATEGY OBVIOUSLY ‘WORKED’ (HUH?!!)… AND ANYWAY, ROBERT SMITH IS WAY TOO OLD TO COMMENT ON CONTEMPORARY CULTURE” MOMENT…
“MY POINT IS NEITHER PARTICULARLY NEW NOR ORIGINAL NOR EXCLUSIVELY ABOUT RADIOHEADS ‘IN RAINBOWS’ BUT IT IS I FEEL STILL COMPELLING ANY FAMOUS ARTIST WITH A HUGE AND DEVOTED FAN BASE(OFTEN ARRIVED AT WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM A WEALTHY AND POWERFUL ‘PATRON’ ORTWO?) CAN AFFORD TO DO WHAT HE, SHE OR IT WANTS… INCLUDING GIVING THEIR ART AWAY AS SOME KIND OF ‘LOSS LEADER’ TO HELP ‘BUILD THE BRAND’.”
Over a decade on, all artists virtually give their albums away for free, and fans have become accustomed to not directly paying artists to listen to their creations. Although Smith was denounced by the Radiohead fanbase for his opinion, with the benefit of hindsight, he was proven right to be worried about the precedent set by In Rainbows. However, the change would have happened anyway, even if Radiohead didn’t make the bold gesture.
