Toronto Mike

Prince's Creep and Radiohead's Order

music

We all love Radiohead's "Creep", right?  Apparently, even Prince loves "Creep", and he recently covered the song at Coachella.  The next day, YouTube clips of Prince's cover of "Creep" were super popular, but they were removed at the request of NPG Records who claimed a copyright violation.

The videos were shot by fans and the song belongs to Radiohead, yet it's Prince who had them removed from YouTube so fans couldn't enjoy them.  The best part of this story is when Radiohead themselves stepped in.

In a recent interview, Thom Yorke said he heard about Prince's performance from a text message and thought it was "hilarious." Yorke laughed when his bandmate, guitarist Ed O'Brien, said the blocking had prevented him from seeing Prince's version of their song.
"Really? He's blocked it?" asked Yorke, who figured it was their song to block or not. "Surely we should block it. Hang on a moment."
Yorke added: "Well, tell him to unblock it. It's our ... song."

This begs the question, did Prince have the right to order YouTube to block a fan-shot video of him performing a song he doesn't own?  And even if he does have that right, isn't it pretty shitty that he'd make that call?

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