Is Radiohead All About the Benjamins?

It's difficult to summon too much sympathy for a major record label, but a new London Times article about Radiohead—thoseRobbin Hood-esque rockers who, the story goes, reclaimed their musicfrom their evil label and dropped it into the hands of thepeople—paints the band as the villains and the record label as thevictim.The article depicts Radiohead as greedy bullies demanding unreasonablesums of cash from EMI, money that the label argues would have come outof the pockets of their other acts:

Radiohead walked out of EMI in the autumn after GuyHands, the group's new boss, rejected a deal with the top-selling rockband that would have cost the record company more than £10 million, TheTimes has learnt.

The massive demand is far greater than had beenthought. The critically acclaimed band had been offered a £3 millionadvance by Mr Hands for their latest album, but wanted more.

An EMI spokesman said last night: "Radiohead weredemanding an extraordinary amount of money and we did not believe thatour other artists should have to subsidise their gains."

Theband's management hit back, saying that it believed that morehigh-profile artists could abandon EMI. It accused Mr Hands of notnegotiating seriously.

Radiohead wanted EMI to hand over at least some ofthe copyrights to their catalogue of albums such as OK Computer, ademand that would have devalued EMI's recorded music catalogue and costthe British music major millions in future earnings.

Giving Radiohead the rights to their last two albumswould have presented EMI with a £4 million loss. It is believed thatthe band was also seeking a guaranteed £3 million EMI budget oninternational marketing for the new album, although their managementdoes not accept this figure.

Only after talks broke down did Radiohead attempt their (temporary) "pay what you like" experiment for In Rainbows.

Meanwhile, in Jay-Z News: The Radiohead negotiations article brings to mind this week's other big music news story, Jay-Z is stepping down as Def Jam president,also after making ambitious contractual demands. It's possible Jay-Zwas high balling the label in hopes that they'd release him, allowinghim to focus on his music career and other business ventures, but ifhis requests were reasonable, the label probably made a mistake lettinghim go. In an era of slumping hop-hop sales, Jay-Z moved the label intomore lucrative pop terrain, breaking artists like Rihanna, and assistedin Kanye West's ascension. He also restored some of the label'sprevious prestige, taking a chance on excellent rap albums like TheRoots' Game Theory. Hurting his case was the modest sales of his own albums, but all things considered Jay-Z served the company well.