Last week, you could buy Radiohead’s OK Computer in the iTunes Music Store. Not this week. No comment, no notice.
Wonder if the leaking of Hail to the Thief to the web soured Thom and the boys on the whole music download thing? If so, I hope it’s a short term anger…
Also now absent: Sigur Ros. They had a headline in the Alternative section last week.
I hope I’m wrong about these artists pulling their music back. If this is just a temporary thing, at some point these searches should start returning songs and albums: Radiohead, Sigur Ros.
But this could be the backfire from Apple’s much-discussed negotiations with the five major labels: what happens if an artist isn’t consulted? I would bet, given how labyrinthine music contracts are supposed to be, that the label’s right to sell the music through online services might vary from contract to contract. It would be interesting to hear from the artists on this one. Maybe Moby could comment? (Only one of his albums, an old greatest-hits, appears in the store at present.)
Article comments
1 - Matt
For the longest time the standard recording contract (read: the one an artist ended up signing unless he/she/they had a good manager and/or competent legal representation) applied to all future media formats in addition to whatever media was used at the time. For example, many artists got burned when advent of the CD ushered in an era of reissuing old records. Those with bad contracts were stuck with antiquated royalty rates that may have been agreed to back to the 1950s or 1960s even as the CD reissues were selling for $13.98 a pop. My guess is that bands like Radiohead that have yanked their songs off iTunes have the contractual right to do so and their record companies are frantically negotiating royalty rates for this new medium.