Reznor on Radiohead and the record industry

Trent Reznor was critical of the Radiohead “bait and switch” release of In Rainbows when he talked to triple j this week. He felt that that it was just marketing for their traditional release and sale of the album, with a low-quality version being made available for a limited time before the CD was released. This is in contrast with NIN’s own Ghosts, which is offered in high-quality lossless formats (although only the first volume is free, which might account for the fact that currently the third result is a link to the full album on The Pirate Bay when you do a search for “Ghosts NIN” on Google).

It’s interesting that he also mentions the high cost of paying for the distribution (including website, bandwidth, payment options, support) of Ghosts. This does make it seem very attractive - especially for less-established bands - to use the distribution methods already in place to release an album. NIN could just as easily have made Ghosts available on P2P networks, although they would of course have had to ask that their fans choose to support them. Perhaps they would have done just as well with that approach, and they would have avoided “all the things that have nothing to do with music”. But it’s certainly true that NIN have offered a very fair deal with Ghosts, one which was undoubtedly influenced by Reznor’s feelings towards the behaviour of record labels. His reaction last year to finding that his own label was overcharging was to tell his fans to “steal it”.

Reznor had even harsher words for the record industry:

They lent me money. When I paid that money back they owned the record. They made the largest share of the profits from the sale of that record. I will never shed a tear to see that dynasty crumble. It’s long overdue. The level of ineptitude that I’ve seen displayed at major labels is stunning. The people in charge of a lot of the digital technologies and the aspects that are decimating their business … are people that seem to not even be on the internet … for them to, right now, in 2008, be considering brokering deals with download sites … you’re five years too late.

You can hear the full interview here