Ed O'Brien says making In Rainbows nearly ended Radiohead

Ed O'Brien says the three years Radiohead spent making In Rainbows pretty much half killed us², and that for a time it was far from sure the band would carry on. He was talking to James Martin for a three-part video interview on the blog of Midem, the music-business conference in Cannes. The first part, on In Rainbows, went up on 11 January, and the second, on filesharing, today.

He puts the strain down to the length of the sessions, three years being long by anybody's standards. What revived them was releasing the record straight to fans, with no label in between. You can't put it into a balance sheet, this feeling of empowerment. It completely rejuvenated us as a band.² It got their ideas flowing again, he says, and it keeps them going. They are at work on the follow-up now, and on Sunday play a benefit for Oxfam's Haiti earthquake appeal at the Music Box at the Fonda in Los Angeles.

In the second part O'Brien says he has a problem with people in the business calling filesharing the thing that is killing them. He doesn't believe it, since people who copy music still buy concert tickets and T-shirts. It's an analogue business model in a digital era.⁷ He would license music more widely and sell it a little cheaper, to compete with peer-to-peer. Many 14 to 17-year-olds, he points out, have no credit card to buy music online with, and he suggests a Richard Branson of today could build a site that makes buying music easy and cheap for 14 to 24-year-olds.

He finds it staggering that the industry drags its heels over such basic things, when this is stuff that you could do in one week. Move quicker!⁶