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The Cure's Robert Smith Slams Radiohead's 'Idiot Plan'

He 'disagreed violently' with In Rainbows giveaway...

  • by Scott Colothan
  • Monday, February 23, 2009
  • Photo by: Carsten Windhorst
  • filed in: Rock Indie
The Cure's Robert Smith Slams Radiohead's 'Idiot Plan' Add to My Fav Bands List Add to My Fav Bands List

The Cure's Robert Smith says he 'disagreed violently' with Radiohead giving 'In Rainbows' away as a pay what you want download back in October 2007.

The 49-year-old expressed his strong feelings in an interview with The Times and hailed Radiohead's landmark experiment as an “idiot plan.”

He ranted: “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.”

Smith also expressed his disdain for illegal downloads, saying labels need to do more to protect their artists.

The singer continued: “It’s almost silly in a tragic way. There’s a strange reluctance on the part of the majors (to tackle it). Their artists suffer hugely from illegal downloading: they don’t sell legal units so the label doesn’t really have to pay them.

“But the label is owned by a parent company some way down the chain that owns the internet service provider. That side of it is very murky.”
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  • I disagree with this ugly old woman. Radiohead sold 72,000 box-sets at £45 a pop allowing them a safety net, so they could allow fans to pay what they want

    ~ by Ale House Tan 2/23/2009

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  • good to know Robert Smith thinks of his fans as "consumers", this makes sense as to why he should disagree with it violently. he must be just a "producer" then and frankly it shows in his endless production line of tired old material. Sadly as a producer musician, he can never exchange anything more than money for goods(or ''bads'' depending on what u think of it) with his consumer fans.

    ~ by tuttle 2/24/2009

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  • I have every The Cure album and paid none. LOL

    ~ by One in a million 2/27/2009

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  • Bless him. He needs to think of his retirement, which can't come too soon for me.

    ~ by Pussbo 4/3/2009

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  • Robert Smith is awesome. The people who disagree are all thieving non-artists so how the hell would they understand what it feels like to get your music stolen? Certainly a band just starting out and isn't super-famous like Radiohead can't afford to give their music out for free. Yeah, it's about the art, but artists have to eat too. Not everyone is a millionaire, yet! Besides, even if you are, respect your work and value it and don't give it away for free.

    ~ by F.B. 10/17/2009

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