Saturday, April 11, 2009

Trent Reznor on music industry

I found this recent interview with Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nail talking about his decision to publish his latest album under Creative Commons licenses.

This interview is from the Digg Dialogg show, where the digg community is asked to submit and vote question to be ask.

Reznor's answer to the first question is quite insightful on the way internet may change copyright and intellectual property in the future:

"Trent - you've embraced Creative Commons and file sharing, but your business model (aside from touring) still primarily involves selling music either digitally or physically. Why haven't you embraced advertising as a business model, e.g. placing ads on your torrent tracker? Why let Pirate Bay take all the ad revenue you deserve? Furthermore, why aren't you building a brand new record label based on a modern business model?"

Check out the video for his answer.





You can check the whole list of questions here.

EDIT: video doesn't fit well on the blog, visit digg dialogg web page to see it all.

2 comments:

  1. I think Reznor is bang-on... Instead of struggling against changing times and circumstances, he's embraced the new digital realities and developed a business model that fits into it... It's pretty forward thinking...

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  2. I can't agree more with you.

    Here's other evoking comment from Reznor:

    Rocker TRENT REZNOR is urging all musicians to follow in his footsteps and ditch their record labels.
    Reznor's band Nine Inch Nails broke away from their deal with Universal in 2007, after a tempestuous relationship with the music giant.
    The singer describes the experience as "liberating" - insisting big labels make too much money from musicians and are completely out of touch with the industry.
    Reznor says, "Anyone who's an executive at a record label does not understand what the internet is, how it works, how people use it, how fans and consumers interact - no idea. I'm surprised they know how to use email. They have built a business around selling plastic discs, and nobody wants plastic discs any more. They're in such a state of denial it's impossible for them to understand what's happening.
    "One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract. I said, 'Wait - you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it? Who the f**k made that rule? Oh! The record labels made it because artists are dumb and they'll sign anything' - like I did. When we found out we'd been released (from their recording contract) it was like, 'Thank God!'. But 20 minutes later it was, 'Uh-oh, now what are we going to do?' It was incredibly liberating, and it was terrifying."
    And Reznor adds that musicians should be exploring other ways to sell their own music, rather than relying on labels: "As an artist, you are now the marketer."

    http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/article/reznor%20urges%20musicians%20to%20ditch%20labels_1099985

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