Trent Reznor Says "Steal My Music"

THX-1138 writes "A few months ago, Trent Reznor (frontman of the band Nine Inch Nails), was in Australia doing an interview when he commented on the outrageous prices of CDs there. Apparently now his label, Universal Media Group is angry at him for having said that. During a concert last night, he told fans, '...Has anyone seen the price come down? Okay, well, you know what that means — STEAL IT. Steal away. Steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealin'. Because one way or another these mother****ers will get it through their head that they're ripping people off and that's not right.'"

Concert, not interview!

[babbling]

This was during a concert, not an interview. A YouTube clip of him talking about it. [youtube.com]

Re:Going indie

[Bacon Bits]

If you've followed his career at all, you'd know his current record contract exists only because he had no other choice.

He was using his own label -- Nothing Records -- to publish his music. He never liked working with the big labels. However, while he was going through some pretty destructive drug use after The Fragile, his partner essentially took the money from Nothing Records and ran. Trent woke up and found himself with no money and no way to make money.

He signed a multi-album deal to get him enough money to be independent again, but he has become increasingly disgusted by the practices of the label (double dipping by charging Trent to do the color shifting ink label and then still charing the customer more, etc.). IIRC, he's got one album left and then he's free. I'd expect it to be released sometime in 2008 or early 2009, depending on how profitable his tour is. He wants out ASAP.

Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is?

[Chris Burke]

Why, if his point is that they're charging too much for CDs, not that the entire edifice of the music industry should be torn down? Refusing royalties would be pointless since all that would happen is the record company would keep even more of the CD price. Canceling his contract would be a dramatic gesture, but then he would have zero influence in that company anymore.

I mean of course it's just a gesture from a very rich man -- being rich is kinda what enables him to be able to afford to say "steal my album even though I'm payed through royalties". You won't see any small-time act say that unless they all have day jobs. But whereas he could make a more extreme gesture, this is one where he is putting his money directly where his mouth is -- i.e. he's threatening his own royalties through increased piracy.

Just compare it to the "gestures" of other rich musicians who make a lot of money from royalties -- yes, I'm thinking Metallica here. Compared to Lar's "stop stealing our stuff, pay full price and like it bitches" I think Trent is a lot better even if he isn't going as far as you'd like him to.

On the other hand, System of a Down actually named an album "Steal This Album" so I think they win in the "encouraging piracy of their own products" dept.

Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is?

[RingDev]

Actually, until 2005 Trent was running Nothing, his own Label and Studio. And given his attitude to the industry (the record industry, not the musicians), and his past affinity for the internet and viral marketing, it would not be surprising to see him go to a fully independent internet only distribution system and start a new label once his contractual obligations to Interscope are done.

-Rick

Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is?

[purpledinoz]

He's right though, CD prices are still too high. An extreme example is in Malaysia, a I looked at some CDs, and they costed 45 ringit, which is about $15. Normal price for an American. But if you consider that an average Malaysians make 3 times less than an American, then a 45 ringit CD to a Malaysian is like $45 to an American. Now, who the hell is going to pay $45 for a CD????

Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is?

[thegnu]

You're right, the 13 cents he makes per cd should totally be given back. Power to the people!

Don't forget he has to pay for studio time, so make that 13 cents per CD (that's a very good deal, as these things go) minus $200,000 for each project.

How's the math on that?
-Nathan
PS:I'm sure trent has built his own studio by now and has engineers lapping at his johnson to work on his stuff. But still. I bet the studio cost a couple million.

Re:Going indie

[Anonymous Coward]

At his Year Zero site: http://yearzero.nin.com/ [nin.com]

At the bottom of the page, under "Multitrack Audio Files"

Garage Band style on the left or Raw WAV's on the right.

Especially since

[Sycraft-fu]

The label would just keep the money. That's not really a punishment for them "Do what I say or I'm going to give you MORE money!". If he could force the label to give the money to the consumers, ok then maybe I could see a point, but he can't so it would just be giving them more.

Rather, he seems to be encouraging his fans to not buy his music, which deprives him of royalties, but also deprives the label of money.

Re:Someone call the folks at "Intervention"

[thegnu]

Face it Trent, you've still gotta make a few records for them. Do what Prince did, paint 'slave' on your face and release a few "best of NIN" albums and then do whatever you want on your own label or just sell your stuff online, we'll buy it.

I think he's working on it. Should everyone just do what Prince did? It seems like that would be unoriginal. And the issue is that he criticized the high prices of CDs, and got attacked for it, so he presents an alternate solution.

Garth Brooks, with the commercial clout he had, had the decency to refuse to do business with people who sold his CDs for more than 12 bucks.

Reznor is not in a position to do that until his contract is up (great idea about the shitty best of CDs btw), and he's fighting fire with fire. I think his main point is that he wouldn't buy his OWN music at the prices they sell it for, so why should his fans? Especially loyal, dedicated fans who have supported him for years?

he has a history of problems with publishers

[acidrain]

Sure, he might not have said these things back when Pretty Hate Machine was about to be released

I'm told he took a long break from recording after Pretty Hate Machine until his record contract expired because he didn't like the terms he signed. No love for the system from that guy.

Here is the wiki section on his issues with the cooperate world:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Inch_Nails#Corporate_entanglements [wikipedia.org]

Re:Concert, not interview!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is hearing the music from outside the stadium evil in your draconian world view?

I'm Australian

[matt21811]

CD's in this country are not that expensive. I think they have been about $25AU for at least 15 years. Infaltion seems to have had no effect on music. If anything music has gotten cheaper due to the competition from iTunes. I used to buy a lot of CD singles. I have one that still has the price sticker on it, $9! (The average was more like $5.50) Today, I can get a CD single for about $3.50. Not only that but wages growth has exceeded infaltion by a very healthy amount here so I can buy a lot more music that I used to for the same proportion of my income. Music may be cheaper in other parts of the world but it certainly isnt expensive here.

Concert tickets, on the other hand, now there's inflation. It wasnt that long ago that a concert ticket was the same price as a CD. Now, you can pay 4 to 12 times the price of a CD for a concert ticket.

Re:Trent, you say "Steal My Music", but,

[justinlindh]

Didn't Trent also in some way support the distribution of Year Zero in UK rest stops or something? For some reason I vaguely remember reading an article about some kind of USB key download station that was set up, where it would copy the Year Zero album onto a USB key if it was inserted. Supposedly it was part of the "Alternate Reality Game" that Year Zero is shooting for or something.

Or did I entirely dream this whole thing up? Regardless, he won the nerd heart years ago when he did the music for Quake, and moves such as this only make me respect him more.

Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is?

[miskatonic alumnus]

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

Hmm, no mention of IP here. But, keep fighting the power.

Re:Off-topic, but....

[Volante3192]

Pretty Hate Machine came out in 1989. Somewhere in the past 18 years I'd imagine it recouped it's production costs. Could you imagine software made in 1989 being sold at original retail today?

100,000 CDs a year

[athloi]

Major label payout at 10%
Wholesale price: $9 / 90 cents per CD = $90,000.00

Selling as independent artist and Amazon(tm) Partner
Staff member to mail packages: $30,000 per year
Cost per CD, printing: $1
Cost per CD, packaging and mailing: $4
Cost per year: $530,000 on revenues of ($15 CD) $1.5m

Net: $1m

Going indie is not just more trendy, it's more profitable, once you've already got that mega-media marketing machine convincing 100,000 people they need to buy your (mediocre) music.

Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is?

[KikassAssassin]

Trent is in a contract with his label to put out a certain number of albums through them before he can break away and do his own thing.

In the interview that was mentioned in the topic (http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21741980-5006024,00.html [news.com.au]), he says:

(Interviewer): Given all that, do you have any idea how to approach the release of your next album?

I've have one record left that I owe a major label, then I will never be seen in a situation like this again. If I could do what I want right now, I would put out my next album, you could download it from my site at as high a bit-rate as you want, pay $4 through PayPal. Come see the show and buy a T-shirt if you like it. I would put out a nicely packaged merchandise piece, if you want to own a physical thing. And it would come out the day that it's done in the studio, not this "Let's wait three months" bulls---.

Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is?

[Zonk (troll)]

NiN is a Big Deal & could easily start their own label and do whatever they damn well please. So, by suggesting he renounce royalties, the GP is saying that Reznor shouldn't just say "Fuck the Man", he should actually stop taking money he's earned through the system he decries.

Perhaps he should. A cool name for it would be Nothing Records [wikipedia.org]...

Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is?

[Chris Burke]

NiN is a Big Deal & could easily start their own label and do whatever they damn well please.

They (or rather he) did - Nothing Records. Then it went bankrupt (sounds like a partner took advantage of him, i don't really know the story though) so now having far fewer financial resources he resorted to going back to the big label for a contract. A contract he's not going to be able to get out of soon. In the meantime, he's pissing off his corporate masters which is exactly what I would expect.

Re:Off-topic, but....

[vux984]

that doesn't mean that the first one wasn't insanely expensive to produce.

That record has long since more than paid for itself. It spent 2 years on the charts.
16 years later on I think we can safely assume its been paid for.

Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is?

[clem.dickey]

System of a Down actually named an album "Steal This Album" so I think they win

Only us really old geezers recognize the reference to Steal This Book [wikipedia.org], by Abbie Hoffman.

Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is?

[c_forq]

That is about right. Usually how it goes is 130,000 albums multiplied by $10 (released that limited are usually $10-15) and you get 1.3 million. Now for a young non-established artist the record company will give at best 10% (because of the risk of not getting their money back). So the artist is left with 130,000 now. But we are don't yet, for chances are the record company fronted the expenses of studio time, which can easily go above $200,000 depending on the studio, and the record compay will recoup this out of the artist's royalties. There are some really good independent labels, but on the other side there are some independent labels that are worse scammers than the majors.

Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is?

[Araxen]

Not get out his contract of soon? he has one more CD and his contract is done with his label. He'll be out of his contract within a year from now.

Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is?

[tim.noir]

According to the Australian interview [news.com.au] he has one more record to go and then he's done with them. He also says he'll probably do an internet release and self released package of whatever comes afterwards.

Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is?

[mr_matticus]

The only constitutional reason for any kind of extraordinary control granted over ideas to an individual or company are to promote progress.

No, it's to promote progress by granting an exclusive right. It's not some willy-nilly ambiguous statement. The mechanism by which an exclusive right has any value whatsoever is in protection of commercial interests. This corresponds precisely to the Lockean theories of profiting from labour. This should be eminently obvious to anyone who has ever studied the Constitution--Hobbes and Locke, anyone? Clearly we can't count yourself among them.

the current system has been shown again and again to retard progress

It does not. Progress for society does not correspond to instant gratification for every cheap bastard who doesn't want to pay for something. It doesn't mean progress in the life of a man, it means progress by encouraging ongoing participation in the system. It has been a colossal success. See Beard, for starters. You don't even need an academic source to know this, because you can just look at the machine in front of you and the home you live in.

is therefore unconstitutional

SCOTUS disagrees, and since they are the final arbiter of the Constitution, as provided for in the Constitution, that is check and mate for you, my friend.

Re:It's a sham.

[spiritraveller]

Actually, no they couldn't. Not unless you think gag orders are actually enforceable. Just because someone has a contract doesn't mean you can stop them from talking about how much they dislike it.

"Gag orders" are enforceable, but that's a completely different subject and context that is not relevant here.

If they really wanted to stop Reznor, they would threaten him with a lawsuit. There are a number of legal theories they could go after him with. Breach of Agency, Breach of Contract, Tortious Interference... and probably others.

Suffice it to say, when you have a contract which basically puts you in a joint venture with another party to sell a product, you aren't supposed to go around encouraging people to "steal*" that product.

* - "Steal" is Reznor's choice of words, not mine.

Re:Reznor gets a higher % than the record company

[Anonymous Coward]

You have NO IDEA what you're talking about. First off, Clear Channel Entertainment hasn't existed for two years now. If you claimed the knowledge of the touring and live promotions industry you claim, you would be well aware of this. CCE was cut from CC and Live Nation was formed (which has absolutely nothing to do with CC), and Live Nation owns SFX. So CC is out, and has been out, for some time. Second, nobody gets 90% of the gate. NO ONE. Not even the Rolling Stones, let alone Nine Inch Nails. Streisand as well NEVER gets 100% of the gate. It does not happen, and never will happen. The artists especially never get a cut of concessions EVER, as that is negotiable only between the venue and the booking agency. If you want to lay the blame for rising live event costs somewhere, lay it where it belongs - on the insurance companies. Live Nation can barely turn a profit (it's true, look up their earnings) and artists get their guarantee and little to nothing more because attendance has tanked across the board from small venue to amphitheater. Insurance on the other hand continues to skyrocket because of violent fans who sue when their own violence gets out of control.

Thirdly, and this I can't believe Slashdot modded you up for, the production and promotion costs for records absolutely do NOT come from the label's cut. It is standard practice for the artist to receive compensation only after recouping costs for the label. This includes said production and promotional costs.

Re:Off-topic, but....

[Fizzl]

Ehum. I just "reduced my noise floor" to -90db (that's almost zero) with behringer eurorack ub<something>, t.bone condenser mics, and a behringer firewire audio interface. This cost me about 200 euros.
Digital recording and leaps in mic pregain circuit design has made noise-free audio easy to attain.
While I was just testing, I got some odd noise on the meters and got worried. I cranked up the pregains and recorded the noise to find out where it comes from. Ended up being my laptops cooler. I was picking that up from 4 meters away and there was no foreign noise when I listened to it.

All studios are using DAW's nowadays. Only _must have_ expensive equipment is mixing table, room acoustics and monitoring speakers. Even the mixing table is primarily used for routing and grouping for the A/D interface.

And, uh, in conclusion. Your point is valid.
It's just that building a studio isn't as expensive as it used to be, so no point paying $200/h when you could get your own adequate one for couple of grand.

Re:Tickets to his show run $89 for two !! (bad arg

[badpauly]

You are losing sight of the original point TR is raising. Prices in AUSTRALIA are stupidly high. His original rant (back in May) was when he found out that his album was priced at AU$32 (US$17.50) while generic top40 fluff was sold at AU$21. The reason given by the record company (UA) was that his fans would pay that price, so they will sell it high. The video is him continuing that rant. Australian prices hadn't dropped (RRP) and as he found in China, his music was damn near impossible to find apart from pirate copies sold in markets. In those cases (prices artificially inflated or items not available) he said to download it free. That you can pre-order in the US for a cheap price means nothing to the argument. You either have to wait a few weeks for the item to be sent, or pay extra for priority airmail (negating the cheap price anyway). If you can buy any CD cheap, cool. But some of us do get ripped off just because we aren't in the good ol' USA.

Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is?

[TheThiefMaster]

Don't be stupid. X times less is a common way of saying 1/X. "3 times less" = "one third".

Re:Concert, not interview!

[garett_spencley]

Not that it has anything to do with Trent Reznor, but Pearl Jam canceled an entire tour in 1994 and boycotted Ticketmaster for adding a surcharge to their tickets and raising the prices of their concerts. So it's not unheard of for major label bands to have issues with "Big Company" with regards to their ticket prices as well, and take action to benefit their fans.