Nineteen years ago this month, Radiohead released its seventh studio album, In Rainbows, and invited fans to pay whatever they wanted for it. Given that this announcement came amid rampant music piracy and the general collapse of the recorded music business, some took the move as proof that recorded music had lost its value, that the old model was broken and that artists would have to give their work away to survive.
But “the question was never really about price or value,” said Cliff Fluet, co-head of media and entertainment at U.K. law firm Lewis Silkin LLP, during a talk at last week’s Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE). “It was about who owns the relationship with the fan.”
Fluet used that moment in music history to center his wide-ranging talk at ADE 2026, the annual dance music industry gathering in Amsterdam that concluded this past weekend. Speaking to a packed room on Friday (Oct. 23), Fluet gave a talk titled “The State Of Things With Cliff Fluet” that spanned topics from AI to recent industry mega-deals and more. These topics all related to a central theme: Who currently holds power in the music industry, and how is that shifting?
The conversation happened as part of ADE Pro, the event’s programming track for those in the industry, which in total hosted 148 panels, 25 mixers and other sessions that brought the number of Pro programs to 188.
In the talk, Fluet argued that Radiohead wasn’t making a statement about what music was worth. Rather, he said, they were making a statement about engagement, independence and going direct — three principles that, nearly two decades later, still define where astute members of the music industry are focused.
Here are five takeaways from the presentation.
