As if you already didn’t know, Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails’ frontman, also “gets” it. “It” meaning that the music business, as we once knew it, died some time ago. Also, he thinks Radiohead’s In Rainbows was a stunt more than anything else.
Reznor, in speaking with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, called out Radiohead for releasing its latest album in “MySpace-quality.” He’s referring to the genuinely subpar audio quality of the digital download, which was only a collection of 160kbps MP3s. Compare this to Nine Inch Nails’ latest album, Ghosts, which he’s made available in all sorts of formats, including FLAC, Apple Lossless and 320 kbps LAME MP3. That’s $5 for an entire FLAC album—that’s foresightedness.
Basically, Reznor is saying that Radiohead half-assed it and undeservingly benefited from the hype. (We probably got caught up in the hype, too. What happened to my trademark cynicism last fall?) Note that Radiohead still depends on a record label, while NIN has completely divorced itself from the “inept.”
Let’s not forget that NIN also released the first volume of Ghosts on popular BitTorrent trackers, no doubt winning the band (or however you want to classify it) some brownie points with “elite” music fans.
Good on Reznor.
Reznor: Radiohead offering was insincere, industry is inept [Ars Technica]
I don’t like anything radiohead has ever put out.
Somebody should call Trent Reznor out for making crap music for years. Sure he’s released it in every format known to man, but does anybody really give a shit?
And don’t give me that “poet laureate of the [insert obscure sub-genre here] movement” crap.
Sorry for the rant.
How about we call out cavemen for just inventing the wheel and harnassing fire. Ooo, the wheel. They half-assed it. Those bitches should’ve created a car. Ooo, fire for cooking meat. They half-assed it. How about some fricken lasers beams?
Say what you want… but Trent released Year Zero (read at wired) at torrent sites, the disc contained clues to an ARG… Also, yeah, RadioHead half-assed it… quality control?
Also, the response to Ghosts I-IV… the fans did bring the server to it’s knees when going there to buy it (tripling the expected demand AFAIK from ghosts.nin.com).
Yeah, NIN music is not for everyone (not that i have anything against them but I suppose that it will prove difficult to find a Spice Girls’ fan craving for the halo twenty six)… As it is with Radiohead or almost every other band.
So to sum up all i say here is that Trent knew what to put on the torrent sites, what quality of sound was expected from them on a digital download and has many many more points for releasing the entire album (Ghosts I-IV) DRM free under the Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial – Share Alike License.