Radiohead

At MIDEM, the music industry's trade fair, Ed O'Brien explains the In Rainbows release to a room of people whose business it complicated. He concedes the commercial point at once. Had they wanted to maximise income they would have signed to a major, and would probably have sold more records worldwide; what they got instead cannot be put on a balance sheet.

The record took about three years and half killed them, he says, and whether the band carried on at all was in the balance. The plan was known only to the band, their managers and about four other people.

Releasing it meant posting roughly ten words on their website and watching them spread across the world, which he still describes with a kind of childlike pleasure. The word he keeps coming back to is empowering, and he ties it to getting the band working again, not to money.

His argument to the industry is about trust. Because they always meant to make very different records, they had to build an audience willing to follow, which he calls a tribe rather than a market. The model has to change, he says, and certain parties are very frightened of changing it.