Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
You're right, the 13 cents he makes per cd should totally be given back. Power to the people!
This was during a concert, not an interview. A YouTube clip of him talking about it.
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
Nothing can stop him now.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
motherbuckers?
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Yes, because those recording industry guys really hate it when people give them money. Man that gets them riled.
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
Jeopardizing one's employment by publicly disagreeing with the immoral practices of one's employer doesn't sound very empty to me.
Sure, he might not have said these things back when Pretty Hate Machine was about to be released, but that doesn't negate what he's saying.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
Back to the same old B.S. that has caused turmoil in Hollywood since I can remember.
Artist makes contract with "BigCo", and "BigCo" agrees to a % of the "sales" as they define them, and then "BigCo" sets the price of the movie, book, or music where they want to get their profits they want. That was the way of the 20th Century.
In the 19th Century, artists of all types made money on direct sales, direct live acts and there was little other than a shop that might sell works for a % of the sale.
Now I wonder if the 21st Century Artist is not moving back to the 19th Century methods, where the artist controls things more, since it is the Artist inspiring the viewers, listeners, readers of his work that counts for quality artistic expression. If Artists have something hot, that your subset of the human race likes, the Internet allows those mutual groups to find each other in lots of ways.
I think the Internet is leveling the playing field, and artists are likely to see a resurgence of interest...provided they have quality work.
If you can steal a Ferrari in such a way that the original owner still has his Ferrari and suffers no loss from your theft, then more power to ya.
I love Trent and think he's a very talented musician, but I'm wondering if someone's back on heroin again. I agree that the music industry is ripping off the artists and the listeners, but when you sign a contract, you agree to many things and it's doubtful that the company with which the agreement was made is going to look fondly on any attempt to decrease what they were promised (i.e. profits).
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.
Guess publishers were smarter 2 scores ago.
...what the Anti-Christ is to the Catholics. :-P
Rock on Trent, rock on.
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
Royalties? you are enjoying that smoke I hope...
Having been in the biz I know why he said that at a concert; he gets NOT ONE DIDDLY PENNY for those CDs. nada, nothing nyet! that is the way it works. All your uber stars get nothing more then a screw job for the recordings which is why they go on tour. Life on the road sucks but at least you DO get a percentage of the concert take. Remember that band from the 60s you loved? They are playing the county fair in Backwoods Iowa today and may get 20% of the gate or if they are lucky car fair, and a straight grand or so for a week's performances. Music biz is a reality check; The record companys get the other sort of chequeues.
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
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
He's already hit the top of his career. His fans will find him even if he never pays another dollar in marketing.
:)
In fact, his hard-core fans will probably be happier with him if he never pays another dollar in marketing.
The problem is that the industry is structured to cash in on people like Trent who make millions.
Then there are the one-hit-wonders. Use them up and spit them out.
Then there are the hordes looking for a chance to make it big. They can give away their stuff until they're signed. Then the labels own them.
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.
The enemies of Democracy are
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
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
>> Until the studio pulls out the contract with his signature that states that the studio owns the IP.
Anytime you see the term 'IP' used in this context, think 'Illusionary Property' because that's exactly what it is. The whole fiction of IP being somehow property that can be owned, sold, stolen, or otherwise equated with real hard goods is a fiction created by lawyers and corporations to extract more money and control for themselves.
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????
Can you please cite the judicial order or legislative ruling that establishes copyright infringement as equivalent to theft?
And, on topic, what about the big fuzzy gray area where the creator of a work still has free expression to say things like "steal this book" or "my agent is a dick nose and I want out of my contract?"
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
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.
While I agree with Trent that the music companies are totally screwing the people who want to buy the music, stealing it will only cause the music labels to want to up the price of the cds to recover what was "stolen" by people downloading and sharing the music. More power to him, but I fail to see how this is going to make those motherfuckers see the light.
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.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
But doesn't stealing something require taking it *WITHOUT* permission?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
While I agree with him on this, it is wrong to tell people to steal when you are a role model like he is. I suppose he justified stealing his music by explaining the situation with prices and record labels, but that does not make it right. What next, the CEO from Dell gets leaves and tells everyone that the computers they are buying are way overpriced and that people should try to steal them instead of paying that price? That is a slippery slope obviously. Instead, he should instruct people not to buy it at the price it is and let the people, themselves, figure out how they want to go about not paying for it.
The correct thing it do here is vote with your dollar - do not pay the prices if they upset you. That said, stealing the goods instead of paying for them is not voting with your dollar, it is stealing. See how that works?
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
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
-- http://thegirlorthecar.com funny dating game for guys
If you can steal a Ferrari in such a way that the original owner still has his Ferrari and suffers no loss from your theft, then more power to ya.
/. argument why copying music/video/software is not theft. (I realize you are not making the argument here) I think it is wrong - even if you could magically replicate a Ferrari - the creator of the original has not been compensated for his work in creating it - and so suffers a loss. That to me is theft. As a side note, the ability to create unlimited perfect copies reduces the value of the original paid for Ferrari - so that person has suffered a loss in resale value - which
This is one of the standard
Now, you can argue that person does not deserve to be compensated for copies produced by others and so the law should be changed; but that is a different position than "anything I can take without cost to the owner is not theft and should be legal."
that position, of course, means the GPL cannot exist - because you can take the code without cost from the original owner and should be able to do whatever you want with it regardless of the creator's wishes. To use the corollary to the "It's not theft argument" - "I would not have bought it anyway so they aren't really losing money" - if a company would not use GPL code unless the code modify it without redistributing the source when the distribute the resulting code they would not make nay changes so your not losing any enhancements since they would not do them if they had to comply with the GPL.
Do I think copyright law is out of date and needs correction? Yes, but silly not theft arguments detract from the real issue.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I think the point about royalties is that he built his career using their distribution and advertising networks and continues to enjoy the benefits (royalties) of their restrictive (high priced) distribution model.
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.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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
Can you please cite the judicial order or legislative ruling that establishes copyright infringement as equivalent to theft?
;-)
Pfft...who needs judicial orders or legislative rulings when you can have wild speculation?
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
instead YOU have stolen our hearts, as ./ers, liberals, geeks, open source people and such.
what are you going to do about that ?
Read radical news here
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?
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.
I know this isn't really your point, but I just hate seeing this fallacy repeated over and over again. The cost of creating the physical media IN NO WAY represents the full production cost of the product. That's like saying that the cost of software is just the cost of creating the installation CD.
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.
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.
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.
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.
technical writing / development
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.
In the world of the copyable Ferrari, the company won't make money from building Ferraris. Designing and building the prototype is just an incidental expense - the real money will be made from the servicing the millions of people with Ferrari copies. There's the 3000-mile engine rebuilds, selling Ferrari tires (with patented 7-lug wheels), providing parts for wrecked Ferraris, driving schools, and money from the Ferrari Bikini Team concert tour.
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), 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---.
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.
"The Federal Reserve is a fraudulent system."--Lew Rockwell
End The FED. -
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.
The enemies of Democracy are
"Exclusive right" pretty much covers that. The right to control something is a property interest.
In a society where rights are evaluated on economic issues, particularly given that the issues that concern IP are business-based, they all function as property rights.
Property is not "things you can own." Property in the law is ALL artificial. Property is the right to exclude, in the simplest of terms. There is no legal relevance to or association with any tangible object in ANY kind of property law. To say otherwise is an extralegal fiction perpetuated by an anti-IP crowd.
Intellectual Property doesn't refer to a "fiction that it's something to be owned." The fiction is the unstated premise that "property" actually refers to a "thing" at all. It doesn't and never has. Real property isn't a thing. You can't own land. You can only own rights to that land guaranteed by the government. There is no difference. The only reason the name "Intellectual Property" exists is for convenience--it flags people as to what specific fields are involved. Real property law is a special pursuit, separate from plain-old vanilla property law, separate from personalty.
People in general don't know what property means, and they don't know what "real" means either, and instead they decide that somehow "Intellectual Property" causes people to think in false terms, as though it has any consequence whatsoever on the legal community. This is why Slashdot's arguments about legal terms of art are spurious at best. Property isn't a thing, and Intellectual Property doesn't imply a thing to own. The thing is the right itself. It's not even a little misleading, contrary to what RMS spoon feeds you.
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
And as the label owns the music outright, you need their permission.
So this is still a copyright violation. What a world
You're presenting a serious argument, not just shouting that copyright violation equals theft. You deserve a good explanation, and not abuse. But there are several reasons why copyright violation isn't theft, and they have nothing to do with who gets compensated for what (in the US at least).
1. Copyright law, at least originally, was all under title 17 of the US legal code. Criminal actions are kept organized in a completely different section, Title 18. So the congress drafted our most basic federal laws to say copyright violation was not only not theft, but not criminal at all. Some parts of CV have become criminal of late, but they are still not all properly incorporated into that part of the code.
2. Copyrights expire. There is no such thing as an object becoming old enough that it is no longer theft to steal it. So long as the constitution says "for a limited time" copyright violation is being treated as automatically not theft by the U S Constitution.
3. There is still a non-criminal class of copyright violations, including 'violations' that are not even torts because of fair use. 'Non-criminal theft' is an absurdity. If copyright violation = theft, then there can be no fair use, as stealing even part of something is still theft just as much as stealing the whole thing. CV=T means no quotation of even a small portion without permission, and makes negative reviews illegal.
4. All copyright law in the US is federal, and the courts have ruled it cannot be delegated to the states. If copyright violation is theft, then the Federal government has no legal grounds for prohibiting the individual states from passing laws to prohibit theft taking place within their borders.
Now, you could argue that the U S Congress, the Justice Dept., and the Supreme Court are all wrong on various points, and the Constitution itself needs amended. Maybe. But I have yet to see any of the persons who are yelling "CV=T!" on Slashdot accuse their congressman of pandering to thieves, or demand a recall of the Supreme Court because they are misapplying the constitution so egregiously, or even lobby their state to pass its own copyright laws that make CV=T locally, and fight the court decisions prohibiting them. The CV=T! crowd seems to love calling typical slashdot posters thieves, but until one of them stands up in the capital rotunda and applies their very same logic to the congress, I'm assuming they either don't really believe it, or are too cowardly to speak truth to power. (That's very much not directed at you, OK?)
On the same note, I've been repeatedly called a thief, just for making these very same points before. Since I have never either uploaded or downloaded music (except downloading by fully legal methods where I have paid properly for every track), I think I can safely say I am not a thief, even by the strictest CV=T definition. So, if the CV=T! shouters are right, and "the law is the law, its all so simple, there are no other factors and only a crook would think otherwise", I know 15 or so Slashdot posters who have committed Libel. I don't see anyone posting to these endless copyright threads with "What you've just said = Libel" when this comes up. None of the CV=T! people seem to give a damn about whether a crime is being committed against me, just against the RIAA. They come off like they live by the George Orwell phrase "Everybody's equal, but some are more equal than others.", and I suspect that's why a lot of people are fed up with them. Personally, I'd rather let them insult me than complain - their lack of rational behavior will eventually make it clear what they really want is very far from justice for all.
Who is John Cabal?
Paul McCartney is worth $1.5 billion.
You can't compare the popularity of NIN or Reznor with the Beatles or McCartney. They're on different scales.
Also, McCartney was recording for an independent label (Apple Records) at the height of his career. That makes a big difference. He also owned the copyright to some of the most popular songs in the world, which he sold for a substantial sum. There aren't many songs that a collector would pay to own the copyright to. It's not a great business proposition.
He ought to split up, citing musical differences with himself. Then set up a new band under a different name.
Seriously though, he makes this plea at a concert, where he's doing what he does best, ie performing rather than perfecting it in a studio to be played off plastic, do the royalties really add up that much? Maybe he's happy to gig. If he's a "very rich man" then why tour now that NIN are no more?
No more so than the idea of anything, including "real, hard goods" being property that can be owned, sold, or stolen is a fiction created to extract more money and provide narrow control to a favored subset of the population.
Property is a social construct, not something with any kind of natural essence. This as true of tangible personal propert and real property as it is of intangible personal property like stocks, bonds, copyrights, and trademarks.
Legitimate arguments can be made over whether any proprietary rights should exist in some things and what kind of proprietary rights should exist in each class of things to which those rights are ascribed, but the idea that proprietary rights in anything or something other than a social construct designed to facilitate the extraction of value and wall off things from the general use is a wildly inaccurate starting point for any such argument.
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.
For his last album he should do what Aphex Twin did and just let his cat walk all over his synthesizer for an hour.
I'm going to run out and buy their latest CD.
.....
Oh, wait
-- Will program for bandwidth
you mean he's biting the hand that feeds him?
:-P
he should write a song about that!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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, by Abbie Hoffman.
I personally know musicians who've got albums in the "100 best sellers of all time" list and didn't make a penny from record sales. Not one.
This isn't anything new either, it's been going on since at leat the 70's. The web is full of stories about major artists who disbanded because they ended up owing money to the record companies.
I remember the day I first showed them Napster and they laughed out loud because they knew it would be the end of the record companies.
What should artists do? First set up a web site. Next, go and talk to somebody like CDBABY - they garantee you at least $6 per CD sale (minimum!). Link to them from your web site.
What should the public do? First watch the movie "Before The Music Dies". Next, steal from the RIAA like Trent says but buy direct from the artist or through people like CDBABY.
The record companies aren't just ripping off artists they're also stifling innovation and killing decent music. The sooner we get rid of them the better.
No sig today...
So Trent acts out his persona and the bigwigs at Universal do their thing and pretend to be totally P.O.ed about it. If they really wanted to stop him, they could.
Meanwhile, the story gets out and more people hear what a rebel Trent Reznor and NiN is. More people download the music... and at the same time, more people go to the record store and buy the over-priced CDs.
It reminds one of the way Microsoft pretends to hate piracy, but knows full well that the more people pirate Windows, the more people buy it. The big labels must be realizing that the more people pirate their music, the more people will buy it.
Culture is somewhat analogous to platform.
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.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
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.
According to the Australian interview 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.
I think the part you missed about the article was that he wasn't actually complaining about how much CDs cost in the US, but in Australia, where prices are apparently ridiculous. Honestly I'm not sure what to make your "he-man" comment, and I was neither defending Reznor's actions nor condemning them, I was simply pointing out that $44.50 for a ticket to a concert of the scale of a Nine Inch Nails show is pretty reasonable in today's market.
But then, I tend to go to more underground shows in small venues, and pay around $8.00 to $20 for a ticket, and all the bands I know survive (literally) off their merchandise sales at the shows. If they sell well, they eat, if they don't, well... they don't.
Shinma
Wait a moment here! Isn't that a hidden subliminal pernicious message from a RIAA artist: that sharing of music files is actually stealing? But is it really? Since when has it become common to call copying (not moving) of bytes "stealing" instead of "duplicating"? If at all, duplication contributes to the author's popularity, and increases his (but especially his label's) wealth out of residual CD and concert tickets sales. Wouldn't that be free advertising, the very opposite of stealing?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Reznor has his own recording studio, and CDs are getting cheaper and cheaper to mass produce. Distribution is really all that the labels do these days. They are nothing more than a specialized FedEx or DHL but yet take > 85% of the profit. Something is not right there.
today is spelling optional day.
read the original posts subject. he is not saying that pirating music is equivalent to theft. he is saying that trent reznor believes that pirating music is equivalent to theft
"I like to wear big boy pants."
There's a whole bunch of artists on eMusic selling songs for $0.30 and albums for around $5.00 (assuming 15 songs on an album), who have yet to make their "pile". If they can do it, and Trent can do it, there's no reason that all the artists at in-between levels of famousness can't do it too, as well as those who sell many more records than Trent.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Prince is by far not the first musician to play every instrument by himself on recordings. Stevie Wonder did this over a decade before Prince, and I know he wasn't the first. I doubt that Trent Reznor got inspiration from Prince to do this. It is far easier to get a piece of music out of your head if you don't have to get someone else to play it for you.
This sentence no verb.
If I were him, I'd make a whole CD out of white noise and screaming sounds, maybe with some drums on top for effect.
Bears don't normally eat things that talk and move backwards.
But besides the IP issues, you signed a contract with Trent Reznor!
You signed a contract with a performer who features bondage, torture, humiliation, S&M, and extreme interpersonal conflict.
I think the record company should feel fortunate that they are only being humiliated from the stage, and not in Reznor's basement.
You have listened to a NiN album before, right?
Hah... as if UMG had class.
Yet for some reason everyone else just wants to increase their already excessive pile. It's nice to see someone say "enough" for once.
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.:)
I always find it sad when the guy who misses the joke and retells the joke like he's the one that's clever gets the mod points.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
No, read the parent post again. The context was: "how is he going to distribute by himself, without a big label behind him?"
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!
First time I downloaded a NiN track, I redownloaded a couple of times before I figured out it was actually supposed to sound like that and wasn't a corrupted file!
Umm.. downloading isn't stealing, right?
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
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.
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.
Don't be stupid. X times less is a common way of saying 1/X. "3 times less" = "one third".
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 always thought IP meant Internet Protocol. But that's just me.
If I'm not mistaken though, it's largely Thomas Jefferson's work to define copyright law. To keep ye learned men writing ye learned works or some such.
I'm relatively sure the concept was, at first, relatively benign and not sinister at all.
I'm saying NOBODY should be able to sign away copyright, not just musicians.
"I reside in the great nation of Canada, fuckwit, where downloading music is still legal due to the levies we pay on storage mediums like blank CD's which go to the CRIA."
It goes to the copyright collective; the majority of it ends up going to SOCAN. The whole "record companies evil, artists good" thing falls down in consideration of the fact that SOCAN represents the composers and lyricists. They represent the artists in the way that the CRIA represents the record labels. I point this out because if you are to defeat your enemies, you must first understand them.
Either way, I agree that the Canadian levy is wrong because:
Social programs can work great... socialized medicine, social security, and so on. But Canada (or any country) doesn't need a socialized music program. Music isn't a rare and precious item; new CDs are around $12 here in the US and you can always find free, legal music (the radio being an excellent source). But the biggest problem is that it penalizes everybody. I pay for my music, thanks. I would not want to pay twice.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman