Robert Smith Disagrees Violently With Radiohead

It's taken a year-and-a-half to speak up about it, but The Cure frontman Robert Smith has a bone to pick with the pay-what-you-want policy Radiohead instituted with In Rainbows in late 2007.

"The Radiohead experiment of paying what you want — I disagreed violently with that," Smith told Britain's The Times newspaper. "You can't allow other people to put a price on what you do, otherwise you don't consider what you do to have any value at all and that's nonsense."

Smith — who'll receive the Godlike Genius honour with his bandmates at the Shockwaves NME Awards at London, England's Brixton Academy on Wednesday — believes the pay-what-you-like approach devalues music. As a guy who likes money, that concerns him.

"If I put a value on my music and no one's prepared to pay that, then more fool me, but the idea that the value is created by the consumer is an idiot plan, it can't work."

The Cure's 4:13 Dream was released last fall.

The Cure, Franz Ferdinand, White Lies and Crystal Castles will play the Shockwaves NME Awards Big Gig at London's O2 Arena on Thursday. The Cure will also headline the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Indio, Calif. on April 19.