Nigel Godrich tells the Guardian why he took his records off Spotify

Nigel Godrich has given The Guardian's Harriet Gibsone two hours in a Covent Garden cafe to explain why he took the albums by Atoms for Peace, his band with Thom Yorke, and his trio Ultraista off Spotify last month. He hadn't expected the uproar; he thought he was writing a few posts on Twitter.

I'm not a dinosaur, I know what streaming is, I know how it works more than anybody I've met.

Nigel Godrich¹

What he objects to is a land grab by the major labels that hold shares in services such as Spotify, and terms agreed now that could become the norm. He questions Spotify's accounting, which he believes rewards shareholders before new artists, and calls its warning that withheld albums won't sell divisive. He does not claim to have an answer, or that he will start a service of his own.

A blog on the paper's own site had argued that TV adverts and radio still pay; Godrich says a £400,000 commercial is out of almost everyone's reach. Maybe if you're Jay-Z. Maybe if you're one of five people.¹

Radiohead's sales of over 30 million albums give him leverage, he says; he has been at the controls of every one of their albums since OK Computer. OK Computer was such a big thing for me because I was given power for the first time¹