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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.'"
IIRC, his contract is going to be up soon anyways, and if this is how he feels his company is treating him I doubt he'll sign a new one. With the innovative storytelling he's done with Year Zero, and essentially making open-source music by releasing the original recording data so that anyone can remix it, it'll be interesting to see how he goes about releasing new music without a large distribution network that the major label gives him.
Actually, if he stopped accepting royalties, then the record companies will make an even larger profit and they wouldn't care. That would make it an empty gesture.
My twitter
Thats the exact quote referenced and includes the full reaction from the crowd.
My only question is did the concert tickets also get cheaper since his last visit?
Would he recommend people break into the stadium?
liqbase
Yeah, because I'm sure that his contract wouldn't land him in court for doing that.
At least this way he can take the "It's actually my intellectual property" defense to the US Copyright Office if he gets thrown into court.
FanFictionRecs.net
And is not afraid to go against the labels' will, e.g. see the history behind an eastern egg on the "Broken" album:
It sounds similar to Matt Groening and FOX. They pissed him off by not letting him concentrate on Futurama and making him churn out more Simpsons so he used the Simpsons as a vehicle to insult FOX executives whenever he could. They had to put up with it as he was sticking by his contract and making them money.
I dont read
It might just work... I'm a rabid Pearl Jam fan, largely because they allow their amateur-taped concert recordings to be given away between fans. I've heard a LOT of good Pearl Jam shows, and in turn, I have bought many CD's because I've heard so many, mostly shitty, recordings of their shows, and I want to have some really good, clear recordings of their shows.
Regardless, music distribution companies simply add no value any more. When a company doesn't add any kind of value, they die. It happened with buggy whips, vacuum-tube manufacturers, and countless other industries. Right now, we can also see the slow death of Realtors because most, if not all, real estate information can be found easily for free. That's life. Adapt or die.
I don't respond to AC's.
Actually, if he stopped accepting royalties, then the record companies will make an even larger profit and they wouldn't care. That would make it an empty gesture.
Feh! They real money is in the live shows. CD sales hardly enrich performers at all.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I have the $20 royalty check for my plus 130,000 sold albums. McCartney is not a normal musician and I do nto abide by slashdot wisdom bunkie. been there, but I could not AFFORD the teeshirt. -nuff said.
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Can you please cite the judicial order or legislative ruling that establishes copyright infringement as equivalent to theft?
How about...
The No Electronic Theft Act?
On February 12, 2007, a USB drive was found in a bathroom stall during a NIN concert in Lisbon. It contained a high-quality MP3 of the track "My Violent Heart," which quickly circulated throughout the Internet. Another USB drive containing the same track was purportedly found in Madrid.
On February 19, another USB drive was found in Barcelona, containing the track "Me, I'm Not" and an MP3 of static.
On February 25, a third USB drive was found in Manchester, containing the track "In This Twilight" and an image of the Hollywood sign apparently demolished.
Concerning the use of USB drives as a form of promotion, Reznor explains:
" The USB drive was simply a mechanism of leaking the music and data we wanted out there. The medium of the CD is outdated and irrelevant. It's really painfully obvious what people want -- DRM-free music they can do what they want with. If the greedy record industry would embrace that concept I truly think people would pay for music and consume more of it.That's awesome, and makes my nerd heart warm.
* Disclaimer - I have not watched the interview, and am basing the above off the /. summary. Yes, it's a risky move, but I'm taking that chance. Sorry if I've completely missed the point as a result.
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. Like Prince was a big deal before his label took his NAME away from him?
They have legal-fu, and they're not afraid to use it.
You can't take the sky from me...
Unfortunately, we are in the scenario where an artist that people will listen to (read: popular) got that way because of the RIAA and the industry they are in... they have likely signed a long-term contract. Once they are out of that contract, the general population won't really care about them (read: Pearl Jam, Prince) and they will kind of fade away. Personally, I like all of these acts I have named, but they aren't in the main spotlight anymore. This is a system that the RIAA has created, and unless someone can a) gain huge popularity without them and b) stay out of their clutches, it won't seem possible to break out of their system.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
You know something is wrong when the MUSIC COMPANY gets pissed at their artist for saying this? WTF, since when did they become the boss, and not the artist? The music company EXIST solely because of the artists and things like lots of annoying sound compressed advertisements (as much as their sold music is) on TV. Let them say whatever they want, and you better just focus on pushing your damn ads everywhere. Musicians barely even need their studios anymore since we entered the digital age and it started maturing to push down artists. Music companies need to come down to earth and realize what duty they have here. The artists are the masters, and they are given their jobs thanks to them. Show them the respect that's due, or if you don't agree, just shut up?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
If you play piano, there's sheet music available for two of my songs, with the rest coming sometime soon.
It's all completely legal to share, as it has a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license. You can create derivative works such as remixes, and even sell my work or perform it in front of a paying crowd, but you must share alike - that is, give your derivative works the same license.
Why am I doing this? I am studying both piano and music theory with the aim of going back to school someday to major in musical composition. I want to compose symphonies.
I'll be in my fifties by the time I graduate - I can't afford to spend years building up a fan base. So when your local symphony orchestra plays my work, I want there to already be a loyal fan base in your city.
Thanks for your help!
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Thanks for all the inspiring music Trent.
We all make compromises trying to be effective in the world.
It is a rare person who can stand up and say "Yes, I made my compromises, and became a little more evil because of it, but good is still good, even when I'm not, and right is still right, even when I'm not strong enough to be."
I have drawn a great deal of strength from what you have produced.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I think his point is, at least in part, that the pricing of his album in Australia is actually limiting the profit potential for himself and the label, but they're greedy little shits.
I heard that Australians are paying around 30 US dollars for the latest album, whereas in the US it's somewhere around 15 dollars. How does that make sense? The label is raking his fans over the coals, because they're going to pay up anyway, but at the same time they're raising the price so high that people who are moderately interested in the band and the album are turned off because they aren't willing to shell out that kind of green on music... In that case, they'll probably download the music anyway.
To me, it all seems like a Frankenstein application of profit maximization.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
the internet has flat out replaced the music publishing business. all we are seeing today in all of these so-called "issues" is the growing pains of moving from the antiquated system to the internet based one
the internet based one, of course, needs no middleman. so your up and coming artist will put out his shingle, his website, be discovered by someone, and grow a fan base. perhaps he will be plugged on some music portal, online radio. people still need somewhere to go to sample new music. traditional radio i suppose won't really change at all, but may return to the era of the salty local dj who picks his own playlists, rather than song lists bought and sold by the music industry
but the money involved in this will all be advertising revenue, not money to or from artists. likewise, artists will only make money, if they ever become popular, via live gigs, or for hawking products: more advertising. artists won't make any money from albums. albums will become a historical artifact of the 20th century. and more importantly, music publishers won't make money from albums, because the music industry itself will simply fade away and die. artists will give their music away for free up front, to grow a fan base. does that sound strange? it's actually completely normal. they did this in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s: it was called radio. you heard songs, you bought the album. now you will hear songs from your traditional radio or online portal, and get it for free. but you will still go to concerts, and you will recognize your favorite artists when at&t hires them to do a commercial, or to play their song in the background of said commercial
and such a future is already ehre, in china, and most of the rest of the world outside the west. this is how most artists in the world live now, and how most have always lived since the dawn of time
just as you say, moving away from the corporate music industry is not some horrible act of trangressive freakish abnormality. it is actually a return to normalcy. it is the 20th century, in the west, with its corporate music industry, that is in fact the freakish aberration in time and place, not the other way around
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You must, simply must, stop thinking of 'property' in a legal context the same way you think of the word "property" in discourse. May I dispose of them as I see fit? That is one property right. Property rights are usually expressed as a "bundle"--you don't have to have every right in the bundle of possible property rights, and in fact I can think of no case in which you ever do have EVERY SINGLE property right to anything. Consequently, it will be difficult for them to obey laws regarding property when they don't understand the terminology. You don't know what property is. It doesn't have any material impact on your life. People aren't expected to think about legal theory--they're expected to obey statutory laws. For example, copyright infringement equating to theft How does this materially impact the average person? People in general can't handle the murder/manslaughter distinction, either. Does it mean we have to do away with it? Of course not. The charges are not important--the rule is: don't do it. Copyright infringement is against the law; only lawyers, courts, and legal scholars have any concern about how. There is further a distinction between theft and stealing. Copyright infringement most certainly is stealing, a lay term. It is not theft, a legal term. Do you follow the finer points of the burglary/robbery distinction? No. It's academic unless you've been charged, in which case your lawyer takes care of it. Or the conflation of a creative work with exclusive rights to its reproduction. What conflation? Authors of a work do have exclusive rights to its reproduction.
IAAL. You are wrong.
There is absolutely no question that it would be a breach of an implied term of his contract to actively discourage people from buying CDs produced pursuant to the contract. The only way this would not be the case would be if the contract contained a clause expressly allowing him to say this type of thing with no penalty.
They could terminate the contract and sue him for (a) the lost sales on this album which result from his comments (which would be hard to prove) and (b) the loss of future earnings on the next album due to the termination of the contract arising from his breach. And they would probably win.
They won't do it, but only because of the bad PR.
Read Pynchon.
It's very easy to give stuff away - once you've already made your pile.
It's very easy to give stuff away - when selling it puts money in someone else's pile.
Artists for major record labels don't make any money selling CDs. You give your mechanical rights to the record company, they promote you, and you make your money on performances. That's the deal.
In the old world, this was a 'good' deal, as without the muscle of the record companies promoting you, your act was going to continue to play bars and night clubs instead of stadiums.
In the new world, there's the internet, and you can do quite well for yourself keeping your mechanical rights and performing less.
paintball
Working on the logic of some assholes on here, you just said something positive about something, ergo you must be a shill for Tool.
Anyway, Tool aren't bad. I've been a NIN fan for about 14 years now, and in 2000, I started boycotting RIAA CD releases. Trent's new album this year, "Year Zero", is the first CD I've bought in seven years. Why did I buy it? Had it been a traditional release, I would never have bought it most likely, despite being a huge fan of Trent's work. However, Trent's marketing, in particular leaking several tracks on USB drives and dumping them at various concert venues was enough to hook me (not to mention the multiple websites and the extremely elaborate back story for the whole album). Because of all that, I wound up buying the CD the week it was released.
Trent has already said that once his contract with Interscope is up (one more album) he's going to an online distribution model and not bothering with a label.
As for Trent's comments... I already knew his attitude toward the labels. On that video I'm more interested in the fact there seems to be not one for TWO security guys right in front of the person with the camera not doing anything about the dude with the camera.:)
You think?
... you're no longer happy just having a car because your neighbour has a bigger BMW than you, so it's time to get a Mercedes.
I think it just as hard to give stuff away when you've made your pile,
If you can comfortably eat, sleep and slashdot (basic human rights I think!) then you've got your pile, and you're in just as good a position to be generous as anyone else... don't make excuses for others having more generosity than you -- accept the fact that you're a selfish greedy human, same as most others.
Me, I've got my pile, and you're not getting any of it! Good on Trent for giving his pile away to you undeserving thieves. I always stole his albums!
Good question, I once read an article that bands in this league usually earn more per concert than they do by record/cd sales of a full year.
So for him having as much non concert audience as possible is more vital than sold CDs.
It probably really is the better deal to get as much audience as possible upfront so that his concerts are full.
Classical example for this is the Grateful Dead, while not having had a huge hit for decades, they constantly had full concerts and probably earned a lot more than many other bands.
Problem is getting that big probably still is impossible without the record industry and their propaganda machinery, but once you are in the contract you hare a slave of them for a period of time.
When living in Greece I was quite surprised by the way they handle this problem. Every singer, from the unknown to the most famous, is actually working. To make a living they produce CDs and then perform in front of people almost daily! Take note that the CDs are usually pirated, and even if they were not over a 10Milion potential customers there is not a great demand. So there are special venues where people can go with friends sit at a table and enjoy a dinner or drinks while listening to their favourite singer live (all included). This can get really expensive in case of the most famous singers but I never heard anyone complain about the costs of a live night compared to the costs of CDs.
Enrico
I'm saying NOBODY should be able to sign away copyright, not just musicians.