NIN Drops Record Label..

[Ed]

Trent Reznor Said
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.

Source:
http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2007/10/09/nin/

Trent Reznor has been very outspoken as of late about his detachment from the record industry (including telling an audience in Australia to steal his newest record due to the outrageous price). This is also accompanied with a history of confrontation with label executives. It's pretty exciting to see artists taking control of their intellectual property.

[Sharessa]

Wasn't Nothing his own label? I'm a little confused.

[kristus]

Maybe he's got an evil twin...

[myk]

Danarchy said:
I'm a little confused.

The Wikipedia is your friend.

[Texas Libra]

Nice to finally see an artist actually encourage people to find a way to listen to a full-length album for free instead of using the Metallica-esque "OMG they downloaded the album we're gonna be poor now!" cliche.

[deathbringer]

I read an interesting thing quite a while ago (well, probably like 6 years) about the radical differences between music and book publishing, for instance a record label can licence a song to be used in a film without the band even knowing (First time Jake Burns, singer of Stiff Little Fingers found out one of thier songs was used in the film "High Fidelity" was when he saw it in the cinema), whereas an author (or thier estate) has to be asked if they want thier book turned into a film. Also writers get royalties directly for sales, whereas musicians get paid a "wage" by the record label, who suck up a large amount of they money themselves. Though of course this doesn't count for small local bands you go to listen to in pubs and buy CD-R's off for a fiver after the set, which incedentally is about the only place you'll hear anything good these days

[Bank]

It's all about the benjamins.

But, good for him I guess.

[kristus]

Texas Libra said:

Nice to finally see an artist actually encourage people to find a way to listen to a full-length album for free instead of using the Metallica-esque "OMG they downloaded the album we're gonna be poor now!" cliche.

This is hardly a first.
*System of a down named one of their albums "Steal this record"
*Chumbawamba's albums got pulled from many record stores shelves after they had advocated that people could steal their albums w/o feeling bad, since they're insured anyway.
*The Offspring wanted to release their entire Americana album for free online. But Columbia said "Uhmmmm, no." And after a while they settled with just the single. They also openly supported napster. And IIRC they got sued by Napster when they made t-shirts that had the Napster logo on it, with some text on it relating to supporting napster.
*Radiohead is giving away their album for free, unless you want to pay for it. There's a thread about it right here in this forum.

Those are just some that I've come across. Undoubtebly there's others, I've never really invested any energy in finding any of them.

[myk]

Bank said:
It's all about the benjamins.

Or maybe it's about not handing the rights and fruits of your work to some dude in a suit, who needs to rip your fans off to get enough of those benjamins for you, his fat ass, and the capital to attract yet another act like you.

[Bank]

myk said:

Or maybe it's about not handing the rights and fruits of your work to some dude in a suit, who needs to rip your fans off to get enough of those benjamins for you, his fat ass, and the capital to attract yet another act like you.

Someone's not unrealistically idealistic.

[myk]

Bank said:
Someone's not unrealistically idealistic.

And in good time, as reducing things to the benjamins to such a degree is indeed idealistic. And if it were thus all about the benjamins Trent Reznor (and many others) would be better off doing something else.