Thom Yorke: YouTube steals art 'like Nazis during second world war'

The Radiohead frontman hits out at video-sharing site’s supposed double standards over ad-blocking: ‘Artists don’t get paid, but if YouTube don’t get a profit out of it, it’s not fair’

Thom Yorke has shared his views on YouTube, suggesting that the corporation, along with parent company Google, have “seized control” of art in the same way Nazi Germany did during the second world war.

Yorke, who famously called Spotify “the last desperate fart of a dying corpse”, shared his thoughts on the video-sharing service during an interview for Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

I don’t have the solution to these problems. I only know that they’re making money with the work of loads of artists who don’t get any benefit from it. People continue to say that this is an era where music is free, cinema is free. It’s not true. The creators of services make money – Google, YouTube. A huge amount of money, by trawling, like in the sea – they take everything there is. ‘Oh, sorry, was that yours? Now it’s ours. No, no, we’re joking – it’s still yours’. They’ve seized control of it – it’s like what the Nazis did during the second world war. Actually, it’s like what everyone was doing during the war, even the English – stealing the art of other countries. What difference is there?