Editors frontman: 'Radiohead were selfish'

Editors frontman Tom Smith has reportedly said that he believes Radiohead's decision to release 2007 album In Rainbows as a pay-what-you-like download was "selfish".

Smith also claimed that the scheme was in direct conflict with guitarist Ed O'Brien's current stance on downloading. O'Brien, a member of the Featured Artists Coalition, has previously spoken out against file-sharing, calling for a 'three strikes' rule for offenders before their connections would be restricted.

Smith told BBC 6Music that he believed O'Brien's view was contradicted by the In Rainbows release. "It's a weird thing to say that but in giving it away for free, it didn't feel like it had any connection to the bigger problem and it was selfish," he said.

However, Smith continued to say that he was supporting the guitarist's anti-downloading stance: "It's like music is just background [for file-sharers], you can just grab bits and pieces rather than an album as a whole," he said. "But I think the big artists have a responsibility for the smaller artists, to speak up when things are going wrong.

"I also find it weird that they [Radiohead] gave their album away for free. I think that's in direct conflict to [taking a stance against file sharing]."