Blur and Radiohead fight for digital rights

Radiohead joins the online music fight
Radiohead joins the online music fight

Some of the biggest names in the music industry are getting behind the ongoing online music rights fight.

Meeting up today as the Featured Artists' Coalition, a flurry of bands and musicians, including Radiohead, Blur and Billy Bragg, are looking to discuss the situation the music industry is in and bid to give artists more control over their music, not labels.

Radiohead famously fell out with EMI over money problems, and are no strangers to releasing music online.

Their last album In Rainbows was put in the hand of its fans, with them choosing exactly how much they wanted to pay for the music.

Not targeting fans

Writing about the FAC on the Guardian's Comment Is Free blog, Bragg said about the meeting: "Our target is not the music fan but the businesses that are making huge profits by exploiting artistic content for which they pay little or nothing at all."

The words certainly hold some weight this week, after YouTube announced it is to stop 'premium' music videos from being shown on the site in the UK.

This drastic and sudden move came after a deal broke down between the website and the Performing Rights Society for Music (PRS).

YouTube and the PRS are still in talks about bringing the content back, with the PRS saying that the talks have so far been "positive".

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Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.