Thom Yorke compares YouTube and Google to Nazi Germany

by Jesse Locke

November 30, 2015

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The Radiohead frontman says they "steal art."

Last year, Thom Yorke released his latest solo album through BitTorrent. Before that, he called Spotify “the last desperate fart of a dying corpse.” The paranoid android clearly has strong opinions about online music distribution, and he’s now served up some piping hot takes on YouTube and its parent company Google.

When asked how he discovers new music in an interview with Italy’s La Repubblica, the Radiohead singer doffed on his Orwellian cap and took aim at Big Video.

“A friend of mine told me about this app to skip commercials on YouTube… They put advertising before any content, making a lot of money and yet, artists are not paid or are paid smalls sums, and apparently this is fine for them. All I know is that they make money from the work of many artists who do not derive any benefit. Service providers make money: Google, YouTube. A lot of money. ‘Oh, sorry, it was yours? Now it is ours. No, no, we are joking, it is always yours.’ They seize it.”

Yorke makes some valid points, but he really could have gone without trotting out Godwin’s Law. In his words, YouTube and Google circa 2015 are “like what the Nazis did during the Second World War. In fact they all did that during the war, the British too: steal the art from other countries. What’s the difference?”

Tags: Music, News, google, nazi germany, Radiohead, Thom Yorke, youtube

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