Nine Inch Nails - Free At Last

After numerous complaints about his record label’s practices, Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails has been released of its contract. Recently Trent Reznor was quoted in the press as being quite angry that the new NIN album was being sold at a higher rate in Australia because statistics showed a lot of fan-base who would be willing to pay more for music. Incidentally, Trent was pissed.

Now he’s free.

(via NIN.com)

hello everyone. i’ve waited a long time to be able to make the following announcement: as of right now nine inch nails is a totally free agent, free of any recording contract with any label. i have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as i see fit and appropriate. look for some announcements in the near future regarding 2008. exciting times, indeed.

exciting times, indeed - I couldn’t agree more! What with this and Radiohead’s unique “pay-what-you-want” album… these are signs of the times to come with the music industry.

(via Gizmodo)

If two of the biggest acts in the industry can see the digital writing on the wall and totally embrace it—that the old way of doing business is broken—why can’t the labels? What Radiohead and NIN are showing is that the business model “of the future” feared by entrenched interests isn’t arriving some time in the horizon. It’s touching down now.

-----