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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.'"
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.
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.
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
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.
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'
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.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
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!
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.
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.
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?
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
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---.
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 cost to record an album continues to fall. In 2007, it is more of an investment of time than of money; most musicians today can make quality recordings at home with only a couple of thousand dollars worth of equipment.
Granted, you will get an appreciably more pristine sound from a big-bucks studio with a top-notch technician and the finest gear, but the cost of entry tends to be "sign this recording contract so we own your soul for 20 years and let us master all of your work to -4dB RMS."
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.
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.
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...
This comment does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the author.
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.
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.
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").
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
Ehum. I just "reduced my noise floor" to -90db (that's almost zero) with behringer eurorack ub, 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.
Bot Assisted Blogging
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.