Ed O'Brien on BBC Radio 4

Ed O'Brien tells Matt Everitt for The Pirate Ship on BBC Radio 4 that Radiohead first refused to let Apple sell their songs one at a time, because they made albums and reckoned 40 per cent of the downloads would be “Creep”. Two or three years on they felt like a load of King Canutes trying to hold back the tide. A band tied to a contract six albums long can feel at times that it has the shackles on, he says, and the music reflects it. Asked whether their long relationship with their label changed with the technology, he says no. “I think it changed because we released In Rainbows without telling them.”