Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails lets rip at ignorant record companies
By Neala Johnson for Herald Sun on May 17, 2007
Itâs funny youâd say that âcos that was not one of my favourite shows
It went downhill at one point.
Yeah. I enjoy playing these days. I try to make the most of it and sometimes its great fun and sometimes, like Monday (Sunday â naut) night when it was crippled with technical problems it made it not fun. I couldnât hear what was going on, shit was breaking....
Fools in the crowd were yelling..
Yeah, mixed feelings about that. I mean, if you want me to go of on a tangent...Iâm kind of in a weird space right now. Iâm not real centred. Weâve been touring for a long time. I went from the record right into the tour, nine weeks in Europe in winter, which I donât recommend in any circumstance for anybody. Iâm moving. Thereâs some stuff in my personal life thatâs up.
It must be an odd time then to have a new album, Year Zero, out?
Itâs a very odd time to be a musician on a major label, because thereâs so much resentment towards the record industry that its hard to position yourself in a place with the fans where you donât look like a greedy arsehole. But at the same time, when our record came out I was disappointed at the number of people that actually bought it. If this had been 10 years ago I would think âwell not that many people are into it. OK, kinda sucks. Yeah I could point fingers but the blame would be with me, maybe Iâm not relevant.â But on this record, I know people have it and I know itâs on everybodyâs Ipods, but the climate is such that people donât buy it because itâs easier to steal.
Youâre a bit of a computer geek. You must have been there too?
Oh, I understand that â I steal music too, Iâm not gonna say I donât. But itâs tough not to resent people for doing it when youâre the guy making the music, that would like to reap a benefit from that. On the other hand, you got record labels that are doing everything they can to piss people off and rip them off. I created a little issue down here because the first thing I did when I got to Sydney is I walk into HMV, the week the recordâs out, and I see it on the racks with a bunch of other releases. And eery release I see: .99, .99, .99. And ours doesnât have a sticker on it. I look close and âOh its .99â. So I walk over to see our live DVD Beside you in Time and I see that itâs also priced six, seven, eight dollars more than every other disc there. And I canât figure out why that would be.
Did you have a word to anybody?
Well, in Brisbane I end up meeting and greeting some record label people, who are pleasant enough, and one of them is a sales guy, so I say âWhy is this the case?â He goes âbecause your packaging is a lot more expensiveâ. I know how much the packaging costs â its cost me, not them, it costs me 83 cents more to have a DC with the colour-changing ink on it. Iâm taking the hit on that, not them. So I said, âWell it doesnât cost moreâ âAh well youâre right, it doesnât. Basically itâs because know youâve got a core audience thatâs gonna buy whatever we put out, so we can charge more for that. Itâs the pop stuff we have to discount to get people to buy it. True fans will pay whateverâ. And I just said âthat the most insulting thing Iâve heard. Iâve garnered a core audience that you feel its OK to rip off? Fuck youâ. Thatâs also why you donât see any label people here, âcos i said âFuck you people Stay out of my fucking show. If you wanna come, pay the ticket like anyone else. Fuck you guys.â Theyâre thieves. I donât blame people for stealing music if this is the kind of shit that they pull off.
Where does that extra on your album go?
That moneyâs not going into my pocket, I can promise you that. Itâs just these guys who have fucked themselves out of a job essentially that now take it out on ripping off the public. Iâve got a battle where Iâm trying to put out quality material that matters and Iâve got fans that feel itâs their right to steal it and Iâve got a company thatâs so bureaucratic and clumsy and ignorant and behind the times they donât know what to do, so they rip the people off.Given all that, do you have any idea how to approach the release of your next album?
Iâve have one record left that I owe a major label, then I will never be seen in a situation like this again. If I could do what I want right now, I would put out my next album, you could download it from a site at as high a bitrate as you want, pay through PayPal. Come see the show and buy a tshirt if you like it. I would put out a nicely packaged merchandise piece, if you want to own a physical thing. And it would come out the day that tiâs done in the studio, not this âletâs wait three months bullshitâWhen your US label, Interscope, discovered the web based alternate reality game (ARG) youâd built around Year Zero, were they happy for the free marketing or angry you hadnât let them in on it?
I chose to do this on my own, at great financial expense to myself, because I knew they wouldnât understand what it is, for one. And secondly, I didnât want it coming from a place of marketing, I wanted it coming from a place that was pure to the project. Itâs a way to present the story and the backdrop, something I would be excited to find as a fan. I knew the minuted i talked to someone at the record label about it, they would be looking at it in terms of âHow can we tie this in with a mobile provider?â Thatâs what they do. If something lent itself to that, Ok, Iâm not opposed to the idea of not losing a lot of money (laughs). But it would only be if it made sense. Iâve had to position myself as the irrational, stubborn, crazy artists. At the end of the day, Iâm not out to sabotage my career, but quality matters, and integrity matters. Jumping through any hoop or taking advantage of any desperate situation that comes up just to sell a product is harmful. It is.Is the Year Zero ARG something labels will copy now?
Well, their response, when they saw that it did catch on like wildfire, was âlook how smart we are they way we marketed this recordâ. Thatâs the feedback Iâve gotten â other artists whoâve met with that label ask âem about it; âyeah, you like what we did for Trent? Look what we did for Trentâ. Theyâve then gone on to try to buy the company that did it to apply it to all their other acts. So, glad I could help them out. Iâm sure they still donât understand what it is that we did or why it worked. But I will look forward to the Black Eyed Peas ARG, that should be amazing.Transcribed by JessicaSarahS