Trent Reznor has some 'issues' with the current system of music distribution and very rightly so. From Billboard Magazine:
Reznor Continues Label Tirade In Interview
Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor continued his tirade against record labels for overpricing his album in Australia in an interview last week with the Herald Sun, calling labels "thieves" and barring label reps from attending his show for free.
"I've have one record left that I owe a major label, then I will never be seen in a situation like this again," he says. "If I could do what I want right now, I would put out my next album ... you could download it from my site at as high a bit-rate as you want [and] pay $4 through PayPal."
He also discussed the massive digital campaign launched around the "Year Zero" album, saying he didn't want his label to have anything to do with it.
"I knew they wouldn't understand what it is," he said. "I knew the minute I talked to someone at the record label about it, they would be looking at it in terms of 'How can we tie this in with a mobile provider?'"
And from the NIN website comes the details of the Aussie release:
Posted on [05_13_2007]
As the climate grows more and more desperate for record labels, their answer to their mostly self-inflicted wounds seems to be to screw the consumer over even more. A couple of examples that quickly come to mind:
The ABSURD retail pricing of Year Zero in Australia. Shame on you, UMG. Year Zero is selling for $34.99 Australian dollars ($29.10 US). No wonder people steal music. Avril Lavigne's record in the same store was $21.99 ($18.21 US).
By the way, when I asked a label rep about this his response was: "It's because we know you have a real core audience that will pay whatever it costs when you put something out - you know, true fans. It's the pop stuff we have to discount to get people to buy."
So... I guess as a reward for being a "true fan" you get ripped off.
* The dreaded EURO Maxi-single. Nothing but a consumer rip-off that I've been talked into my whole career. No more.
The point is, I am trying my best to make sure the music and items NIN puts in the marketplace have value, substance and are worth you considering purchasing. I am not allowing Capital G to be repackaged into several configurations that result in you getting ripped off.
We are planning a full-length remix collection of substance that will be announced soon.
A lot of artists are putting their music out online -- the way to go and this bypasses the dinosaurs.
My Dad is a Physics textbook author and I remember 30 years ago talking with high-level reps from his publisher (John Wiley and Sons) about using Desktop Publishing and a few years later about Fidonet and even later about the Internet. I was met with bovine stares.
I demonstrated TeX for formula typesetting, explained how cheap and simple and easy it was (I had a copy/print business at the time) but all I got was a soft Mooooo and some cud chewing.
Dinosaurs all around us...
