Radiohead became an independent band this year because EMI chief Guy Hands refused to resign them because they would have cost the company £10 million, UK newspaper The Times has revealed.
According to the article, Hands started renegotiating with the band's management not long after EMI was sold to private equity firm Terra Firma.Hands offered the band a £3 million but they wanted more. The Times reports an EMI spokesman as saying "Radiohead were demanding an extraordinary amount of money and we did not believe that our other artists should have to subsidise their gains."
Radiohead's manager Bryce Edge told The Times, "we couldn't move ahead with EMI because Guy Hands irrevocably refused to discuss the catalogue in any meaningful way. We sold 25 million records and we have the moral rights over those six albums. We wanted a say in how they are exploited in the future. We were not seeking a big advance payment, or a guaranteed marketing spend as discussions never got that far."
EMI will have control of the 6 Radiohead albums for the next 50 years.
Their latest album 'In Rainbows' was available as a pay-what-you-like download. The band sold more than one million downloads under the experiment.
The album is officially released independently in Australia today and in the USA next Tuesday.
