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Trent Reznor Says "Steal My Music"
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Sep 17, 2007 04:07 PM
from the unlikely-defense-against-the-mafiaa dept.
from the unlikely-defense-against-the-mafiaa dept.
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.'"
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Trent Reznor Says "Steal My Music"
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Concert, not interview! (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.getogg.org/)
Re:Concert, not interview! (Score:4, Interesting)
My only question is did the concert tickets also get cheaper since his last visit?
Would he recommend people break into the stadium?
Re:Concert, not interview! (Score:5, Insightful)
You're conflating violent crimes with civil infractions again.
Re:Concert, not interview! (Score:5, Insightful)
You're comparing apples to oranges.
On one side, you have a CD: It has a more or less fixed (for any given project) initial production cost, and costs a tiny amount per copy to make virtually limitless amounts of copies of it. On the other side, you have a concert, each night an individual piece of work, with hard-capped supplies for tickets. Of course the prices for one and the prices for the other shouldn't be held to the same standard. It's sort of like expecting oil paintings to be held to the same pricing standards as mass-produced posters.
Going indie (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.froglord.com/)
Re:Going indie (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://rimbosity.com/ | Last Journal: Friday September 26 2003, @08:15PM)
I love, love, love CD Baby. I really, really do. They are what a label in the 21st century ought to be. The cut they take is perfectly fair, they give you all kinds of tips to help you sell your stuff, and really they just provide the store-front and a way to get your stuff into as many net-storefronts as possible, and they just keep doing more and more about this. I get 62.5 cents per iTunes purchase, several times more than any big-label band would get, regardless of how many I sell. I mean, working with them is SO SWEET. You can download your sales as a spreadsheet, something I do to make sure I'm paid up on my cover songs' licensing deals.
CD Baby is fuckin' rad, man. They should be the only label any musician should even consider.
It's hard enough to make money with music without some fucking label assraping you for every dime you "cost" them.
Re:Going indie (Score:4, Informative)
At the bottom of the page, under "Multitrack Audio Files"
Garage Band style on the left or Raw WAV's on the right.
Re:Going indie (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Monday November 12, @09:37AM)
Re:Going indie (Score:5, Informative)
He was using his own label -- Nothing Records -- to publish his music. He never liked working with the big labels. However, while he was going through some pretty destructive drug use after The Fragile, his partner essentially took the money from Nothing Records and ran. Trent woke up and found himself with no money and no way to make money.
He signed a multi-album deal to get him enough money to be independent again, but he has become increasingly disgusted by the practices of the label (double dipping by charging Trent to do the color shifting ink label and then still charing the customer more, etc.). IIRC, he's got one album left and then he's free. I'd expect it to be released sometime in 2008 or early 2009, depending on how profitable his tour is. He wants out ASAP.
Re:Going indie (Score:4, Funny)
(http://tkincher.com/)
Hmm, it would appear that (Score:5, Funny)
mother what? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:mother what? (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Friday October 24 2003, @12:44PM)
Promoter vs Artist (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Someone call the folks at "Intervention" (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.mikeiscool.net/)
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.
"Steal This Book" (Score:3, Funny)
Trent quite isn't a conformist type (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://olo.org.pl/)
And is not afraid to go against the labels' will, e.g. see the history behind an eastern egg [eeggs.com] on the "Broken" album:
Maybe I'm missing something here.... (Score:4, Funny)
(Last Journal: Tuesday September 12 2006, @03:31PM)
That is not right (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Trent, you say "Steal My Music", but, (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.webgeekworld.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday April 27 2006, @07:47AM)
what are you going to do about that ?
Re:Trent, you say "Steal My Music", but, (Score:5, Interesting)
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:
That's awesome, and makes my nerd heart warm.
I'm Australian (Score:3, Informative)
(http://www.mattscomputertrends.com/)
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.
100,000 CDs a year (Score:4, Informative)
(http://technical-writing.dionysius.com/ | Last Journal: Monday November 05, @03:35PM)
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.
Does this even matter? (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://knoppixquake.webhop.net/)
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.
You know something is wrong when... (Score:3, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Monday February 13 2006, @07:11PM)
Steal My Music Too, While You're At It (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.geometricvisions.com/ | Last Journal: Monday May 02 2005, @05:35PM)
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!
To Show My Support (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://geekbiker.net/ | Last Journal: Thursday July 01 2004, @05:57PM)
Oh, wait
It's a sham. (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://spiritraveller.blogspot.com/)
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.
Stealing? (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.cordula.ws/)
It's what he does. (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
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.
Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is? (Score:4, Informative)
(Last Journal: Friday December 05 2003, @03:51PM)
Don't forget he has to pay for studio time, so make that 13 cents per CD (that's a very good deal, as these things go) minus $200,000 for each project.
How's the math on that?
-Nathan
PS:I'm sure trent has built his own studio by now and has engineers lapping at his johnson to work on his stuff. But still. I bet the studio cost a couple million.
Re:Hey (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is? (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.timeforplanb.net/smokee)
Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is? (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Saturday February 25 2006, @11:02PM)
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.
Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is? (Score:5, Funny)
Wshwshoossshhzkt! (Whoosh! Sarcastic Mix) (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is? (Score:5, Informative)
In the interview that was mentioned in the topic (http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21741980-5006024,00.html [news.com.au]), he says:
(Interviewer): Given all that, do you have any idea how to approach the release of your next album?
I've have one record left that I owe a major label, then I will never be seen in a situation like this again. If I could do what I want right now, I would put out my next album, you could download it from my site at as high a bit-rate as you want, pay $4 through PayPal. Come see the show and buy a T-shirt if you like it. I would put out a nicely packaged merchandise piece, if you want to own a physical thing. And it would come out the day that it's done in the studio, not this "Let's wait three months" bulls---.
Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.kibbee.ca/)
That's not quite accurate. (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.college-paintball.com/)
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.
Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is? (Score:4, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/)
They (or rather he) did - Nothing Records. Then it went bankrupt (sounds like a partner took advantage of him, i don't really know the story though) so now having far fewer financial resources he resorted to going back to the big label for a contract. A contract he's not going to be able to get out of soon. In the meantime, he's pissing off his corporate masters which is exactly what I would expect.
Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is? (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.exacttarget.com/)
Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.legalresourcecentre.ca/)
Re:Especially since (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.legalresourcecentre.ca/)
Re:Off-topic, but.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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."
Re:Off-topic, but.... (Score:4, Funny)
(http://tommyd.beeze.com/)
Re:Off-topic, but.... (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.fizzl.net/ | Last Journal: Wednesday November 24 2004, @07:26AM)
Digital recording and leaps in mic pregain circuit design has made noise-free audio easy to attain.
While I was just testing, I got some odd noise on the meters and got worried. I cranked up the pregains and recorded the noise to find out where it comes from. Ended up being my laptops cooler. I was picking that up from 4 meters away and there was no foreign noise when I listened to it.
All studios are using DAW's nowadays. Only _must have_ expensive equipment is mixing table, room acoustics and monitoring speakers. Even the mixing table is primarily used for routing and grouping for the A/D interface.
And, uh, in conclusion. Your point is valid.
It's just that building a studio isn't as expensive as it used to be, so no point paying $200/h when you could get your own adequate one for couple of grand.
Re:Off-topic, but.... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is? (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Thursday December 01 2005, @10:39AM)
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.
Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is? (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Saturday September 22, @12:45PM)
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.
Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://cretin.sf.net/)
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.
he has a history of problems with publishers (Score:5, Informative)
I'm told he took a long break from recording after Pretty Hate Machine until his record contract expired because he didn't like the terms he signed. No love for the system from that guy.
Here is the wiki section on his issues with the cooperate world:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Inch_Nails#Corporate_entanglements [wikipedia.org]
Re:And then (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And then (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And then (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
You speak the truth, sir... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is? (Score:3, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/)
I mean of course it's just a gesture from a very rich man -- being rich is kinda what enables him to be able to afford to say "steal my album even though I'm payed through royalties". You won't see any small-time act say that unless they all have day jobs. But whereas he could make a more extreme gesture, this is one where he is putting his money directly where his mouth is -- i.e. he's threatening his own royalties through increased piracy.
Just compare it to the "gestures" of other rich musicians who make a lot of money from royalties -- yes, I'm thinking Metallica here. Compared to Lar's "stop stealing our stuff, pay full price and like it bitches" I think Trent is a lot better even if he isn't going as far as you'd like him to.
On the other hand, System of a Down actually named an album "Steal This Album" so I think they win in the "encouraging piracy of their own products" dept.
Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is? (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.ringdev.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday May 08 2007, @01:50PM)
-Rick
Re:Has he put his money where his mouth is? (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.geocities.com/purpledinoz/)
Re:One out of one Trent Reznor agrees: (Score:5, Insightful)
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?"
Re:One out of one Trent Reznor agrees: (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://zulupad.gersic.com/)
Pfft...who needs judicial orders or legislative rulings when you can have wild speculation?
Re:Tickets to his show run $89 for two !! (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Sunday July 18 2004, @01:51AM)
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.:)
Re:Tickets to his show run $89 for two !! (bad arg (Score:4, Informative)