Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke is continuing his crusade against tech giants.
The musician compared YouTube to Nazi Germany in a recent interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, as translated by the Guardian. Yorke said the video platform and its parent company Google have “seized control” of art in the way Germany did during World War II.
They’re making money with the work of loads of artists who don’t get any benefit from it. People continue to say that this is an era where music is free, cinema is free. It’s not true. The creators of services make money — Google, YouTube. A huge amount of money, by trawling, like in the sea — they take everything there is. ‘Oh, sorry, was that yours? Now it’s ours. No, no, we’re joking — it’s still yours.’ They’ve seized control of it — it’s like what the Nazis did during the second world war. Actually, it’s like what everyone was doing during the war, even the English — stealing the art of other countries. What difference is there?
Yorke said that he uses paid services like Boomkat to discover music, and has installed an app to block YouTube ads. He added that it’s unfair that the site profits from advertisements that precede videos, which artists don’t receive commission from.
“The funny thing is that YouTube has said ‘that’s not fair’ [to AdBlocker],” Yorke said. “You know? They say it’s not fair — the people who put adverts in front of any piece of content, making a load of money, while artists don’t get paid or are paid laughable amounts — and that seems fine to them. But if they don’t get a profit out of it, it’s not fair.”
