Ed O'Brien asks for EMI's copyrights to go to the artists first

Ed O'Brien wants musicians offered their own recordings back, at market rates, before any of EMI's catalogue goes to another company after Universal's takeover. He makes the case in a letter to the Financial Times this week, signed with Nick Mason of Pink Floyd and Sandie Shaw, his fellow co-chairs of the Featured Artists' Coalition, the lobby for performing artists that Radiohead joined when it was launched in 2008.

Radiohead's own first six albums, from Pablo Honey to Hail to the Thief, are part of that catalogue: they made them for EMI's Parlophone, and EMI put out Radiohead: The Best Of in June 2008, after the band's contract had run out.

Universal agreed last November to buy EMI's recorded music business for $1.9 billion, and is expected to sell parts of it to win the regulators over. The European Commission turned down its first list of sales, and a longer one is now on the table. Independent labels want whatever goes to end up with smaller companies. The co-chairs say a sale to any label, large or small, only keeps alive the old business model, under which recorded music has lost half its value in ten years while new technology pushed the big companies aside. We do not need to repeat the mistakes of the past.¹