"I don't think I've ever met anyone who spends that amount of money on CDs a month."
I did, before I had kids. I know lots of other people who did, too; some still do. You know: music fans. Don't assume everyone's the same as you.
> The business just needs to catch up, and figure out a way to ensure the artist gets paid properly too. It isn't Spotify's fault - its the labels who sell the music to them not coming up with a formula to properly fund the artists.
WTF? The labels' formulae are, obviously, based on the amount of money they're receiving for the music, which is being pushed down by Spotify.
> may I suggest that he puts his money where his mouth is and set up a competing service? Oh, he can't? Why?
Well, apart from the rather obvious point that he is putting his money where his mouth is by pulling out from a service that was making him some money, the key word there is "competing", isn't it? It's extremely difficult to set up a service that will compete with an established dominant industry player by paying more for your raw material. Not impossible, though: you could, for instance, try to encourage the providers of raw material not to do business with the established player. Oh, look! That's what Yorke is doing.
One of the big problems with the music business is that so much of the raw talent enters the industry seventeen years old and desperate, which makes it very easy to exploit by telling it things like "We won't pay you for this, but the exposure will be great for you," or, depressingly often, "It'll cost you £100 to play this gig and it'll be another £100 if you don't sell at least 50 tickets." The price of the talent and material is constantly being pushed down by the fact that these people are naive and know nothing whatsoever about work or business, so are very easily exploited. People who've been in the business a decade or three, like Yorke, are much more savvy and have far better record deals. Occasionally, some of them try to help younger artists by giving them business advice or setting up their own labels which give better deals. And, very occasionally, they do the one thing that the kids really badly need: they set an example. For an established (and, to many, cool) artist like Yorke to do this sends a great message to the kids: "No, you don't have to put up with this crap. Yes, you can turn down offers from people who are ripping you off. Yes, you can set the price of your own product." And the industry is well aware of how bad this sort of influence is for their appalling business model, which is why they've run such a successful propaganda campaign against anyone who does this: witness the fools who are convinced that artists can't survive without giving away their product. Other workers don't get this, you'll notice. "Unless nurses provide care to hundreds of people for free, how will the hospitals know how good they are? No hospital's going to hire a nurse without trying out the service first!"