The value of music labels

Wired has a great interview on their site. It's a Thom Yorke interview conducted by David Byrne. You should check it out.

This is the part that stuck with me:

Byrne: What about bands that are just getting started?

Yorke: Well, first and foremost, you don't sign a huge record contract that strips you of all your digital rights, so that when you do sell something on iTunes you get absolutely zero. That would be the first priority. If you're an emerging artist, it must be frightening at the moment. Then again, I don't see a downside at all to big record companies not having access to new artists, because they have no idea what to do with them now anyway.

Byrne: It should be a load off their minds.

Yorke: Exactly.

We won't be so lucky to have the major labels slit their own wrists, but they're doing everything up to that to kill themselves. It's almost as if they're dinosaurs hoping for the asteroid to come. In Rainbows wasn't the asteroid, but it might be a harbinger comet. I feel compelled to stand before RIAA headquarters with a big sign saying "REPENT!"

The end is nigh.