Radiohead's publishers back down and license fan sites' lyrics free

Warner/Chappell Music will give Radiohead fan sites free licences, renewed every year, to carry the band's lyrics as they did before, the band's management said on Wednesday 4 June. Mel at W.A.S.T.E., the band's mail-order and fan club, is looking after the licences, and letters setting out the terms are due in the next few days.

On Monday 2 June, Warner/Chappell and Warner Bros. Publications, who administer Radiohead's copyrights worldwide, had emailed several fan sites asking them to take down their lyrics and guitar tabs. Treefingers got the letter, as did At Ease, Little Rowboat and Green Plastic. It called the archives an infringement of US and international copyright that cut into sales of the publishers' songbooks, and so into the band's royalties. The email, it said, came in place of an overblown legal letter.

Fans flooded message boards and Warner's email and voicemail, and an online petition gathered signers promising never to buy from Warner's publishing arm again. Neither the band nor Capitol/EMI said anything in public, but Colin Greenwood spoke up on UK radio for the sites that give out lyrics and tabs and promote the band for nothing, Pitchfork reports.

Stanley Donwood, who runs radiohead.com and makes the band's artwork with Thom Yorke, wrote to Adriaan at At Ease that the publisher had not appreciated the work of running a site more useful than a tab book, and that in his personal opinion fan sites do far more for the band, the label and the publisher than anyone recognises. To Treefingers he wrote that the new radiohead.com goes up on 9 June, with the lyrics to Hail to the Thief on it.

oops, it looks like we'll be posting up the lyrics to hail to the thief. guess we'll be getting an email from a certain publishing company too. if not... why not?

Stanley Donwood⁴