Trent Reznor Interview: Oldschool Gaming and New Concepts

[Ed]

http://negativland.com/albini.html

Pretty much sums it up right there.

No-one ever said the music industry would last forever. In fact, it's still in it's infancy in comparison to other services that have grown over the years to become financial pillars.

It surprised me at first to see that bands I thought were living comfortably off of their album sales were actually pulling in sub-minimum wages. The fact is though, a lot of your favorite indie heroes and, in my case, industrial 'super-stars' are working menial jobs between touring to support themselves. This isn't the result of their music being pirated, it's that their labels have, and continue to give them a 1-2% commission for their product. It's a scam.

For a touring musician though, to have your music torrented and distributed all over the internet creates viral advertising that no record company could provide. You have your music in their pocket and thus raises the chance of them going to your show and buying your merch, which is where artists really make their money.

[Mr. Freeze]

Ed said:

http://negativland.com/albini.html

Pretty much sums it up right there.

No-one ever said the music industry would last forever. In fact, it's still in it's infancy in comparison to other services that have grown over the years to become financial pillars.

It surprised me at first to see that bands I thought were living comfortably off of their album sales were actually pulling in sub-minimum wages. The fact is though, a lot of your favorite indie heroes and, in my case, industrial 'super-stars' are working menial jobs between touring to support themselves. This isn't the result of their music being pirated, it's that their labels have, and continue to give them a 1-2% commission for their product. It's a scam.

For a touring musician though, to have your music torrented and distributed all over the internet creates viral advertising that no record company could provide. You have your music in their pocket and thus raises the chance of them going to your show and buying your merch, which is where artists really make their money.

Providing, of course, that they arn't getting screwed over by dumbass promoters and sleazy managers. Or wasting money on gas and food.

If Hate Eternal can't make $300 touring with *Arch Eneme*, you know there is a problem.

No mater how you lok at it, the life of a touring band is pretty shitty right now. Unless you have a lot of cash beforehand.

[Cardboard Marty]

Yes, record companies suck balls. It's an old obsolete business model, and Reznor is absolutely right. The people in charge of these things just want to push some plastic out. They don't care about the music. They want a profit.

However, if you want to be the next Kanye West or whoeverthefuck, I don't see you doing that any other way than signing with a record company. To get that sort of exposure you definitely need something more tangible than word of mouth, like a lot of internet musicians rely on.

Record companies are dead, especially since they haven't bothered to utilize the internet in any positive manner. I see a lot of musicians going independent in the future like NIN, because honestly, why would you want to sign with a record company nowadays? I sure as hell wouldn't. But that's just me.

[alexz721]

Nomad said:

Pretty much whenever any of my bands played with a band touring through, basically all of the money went to the touring bands and we got shit. But we could just have had "generous" hosts.

You know, I think we've been talking about different stages in a band's career. Many never get to the point where they can become touring bands. You know, stay local and whatnot. They barely make any dough. I mean, naturally the touring band is usually a bigger name and will be a headliner and therefore get the most money.

[Nomad]

alexz721 said:

You know, I think we've been talking about different stages in a band's career. Many never get to the point where they can become touring bands. You know, stay local and whatnot. They barely make any dough. I mean, naturally the touring band is usually a bigger name and will be a headliner and therefore get the most money.

And how, pray tell, would one of those bands being only "local and whatnot" make any money from album sales anyway? They can sell demos, sure, but I would place that under merchandise. Selling a bunch of burnt CDs isn't quite the same as selling records.

[alexz721]

Yes I know.

[Nomad]

Then what the hell are you arguing?!

[Starke Von Oben]

I rarely pay for my music, since I know that there will always be enough people out there who will pay for the artists next drug binge or solid gold rolls-royce, encrusted with diamonds as big as your first. I'll only pay for indie products, and especially computer games. Then again I haven't purchased or played a decent game for years now, which is why I've gone back to my golden oldies: Dosbox is a godsend.

The same goes for films. Why bother when you can just rip it from the net? The amount these industries makes is astronomical, so I doubt they're losing that much money. I hear a lot of humbug that the whole industry will collapse, but considering people still go to the cinema I highly doubt that. Most of the cinemas are owned by the major film companies, so they basically have a monopoly on the modern theatre.

The fact is that these people are so fucking greedy, so utterly consumed with an incessant desire to squeeze every last penny out of us that they assume they can use scaremongering tactics in order to get their grubby mits on our wallets. Ever see that advert that claims piracy goes towards funding terrorism? Funny how that only started happening after 9/11, it was never really mentioned before.

And when all else fails, they can always compare ripping stuff from the internet to car theft or street mugging - which they have done. It's utterly crass and simply taking an argument to the logical extreme.

[alexz721]

Nomad said:

Then what the hell are you arguing?!

I was going to ask you the same thing. I feel like we've lost whatever the point of contention was.

[Snarboo]

Starke Von Oben said:

The amount these industries makes is astronomical, so I doubt they're losing that much money. I hear a lot of humbug that the whole industry will collapse, but considering people still go to the cinema I highly doubt that.

Note that despite the amount of money the industry makes, all of it goes to the publishers. Video games take substantially more money and people to make than music yet those that make them barely scrape minimum wage. No, the reason the industry could collapse is because they're too stupid to manage it properly and are too stubborn to change their ways when they prove unsuccessful.

2009 has seen a significant drop in gaming sales compared to last year. Most of that is because of the recession, but it wouldn't take much for the bottom to fall out at this point, especially given the nature of gaming. Every publisher has to keep making multimillion dollar blockbusters that one up the competition, which are then bundled with invasive DRM. The cherry on the moldy cake is the release of expensive DLC that amounts to nothing more than a patch or content that should have been in the game in the first place. All for products that are mostly sub par.

There have even been greedy talks of stopping used game sales. It wasn't long ago that Epic, a bastion of old PC Gaming, were thinking of making the ending to a game DLC unless you buy it new. I know of no other industry that has thought of crippling their own product to stop people from buying their product second hand. Not even the music industry has been that stupid...yet.

[Doom Marine]

Starke Von Oben said:

And when all else fails, they can always compare ripping stuff from the internet to car theft or street mugging - which they have done. It's utterly crass and simply taking an argument to the logical extreme.

Hacker ethics supersedes clueless suits in this case.

I consider most free flow of information not a sin. If you steal a piece of bread, it's not there anymore at the expense of the victim.. but if you copy information, the originals are still there, unmolested. The consequence here is enrichment of the have-nots through sharing of information.

I will not pay Interscope records and their price gouging ways. If Trent ever tours again in my city, I'd gladly pay the equivalent of ten CDs to see him live.

[Nomad]

alexz721 said:

I was going to ask you the same thing. I feel like we've lost whatever the point of contention was.

This:

alexz721 said:

You think a no-name band could get away with releasing shit for free and make a profit? I doubt it.

[Gez]

The no-name band might not make more than $10 a year selling CafePress merch to the few people who stumbled upon their MySpace page and liked their music enough to buy something. But these will still be ten more dollars than they would have earned without the web. 'Cuz they're a no-name band with no publisher, so who's gonna buy their CDs if they don't have CDs to sell?

Anyway, the amount of money they'll earn by making their stuff available freely will be proportional to how much people actually download and listen to these tracks. In other words, if they're not making money from it, it's because they're still unknown nobodies and there is no one out there downloading their stuff.

[Mr. Freeze]

Snarboo said:

There have even been greedy talks of stopping used game sales. It wasn't long ago that Epic, a bastion of old PC Gaming, were thinking of making the ending to a game DLC unless you buy it new. I know of no other industry that has thought of crippling their own product to stop people from buying their product second hand. Not even the music industry has been that stupid...yet.

This is the reason why I want the video game industry to crash again. I hope it does. I hope every stupid, greedy developer goes bankrupt, enever to enter the industry again.

If I get a time machine, I'm traveling back to the '90s. I'll make Halo, get a shitload of money, and start making good games.

Maybe, just maybe..we can save this industry. How do we do that?

Steal.

[Rohit_N]

Or just not buy those games.

[Starke Von Oben]

Call me old fashioned, but artists traditionally have always been poor on the whole. I think art thrives better when people are forced to make do with limited resources. For a nerdy comparison think of Star Wars in 1977 compared to the Phantom Menace.

If people want to make millions, they should play the stock exchange and not become artists.

[Nems]

Mr. Freeze said:

I'll make Halo...