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TV interview with Trent Reznor of Cleveland's "Exotic Birds" 1985

Trent Reznor Calls 'Pretty Hate Machine' Reissue 'A Record Label Bulls--- Move'

by Jason MacNeil

from http://www.spinner.com/

 

Steve Granitz, WireImage

At a time when artists seem to release a deluxe version of an album even before the actual studio album hits shelves, it's refreshing to see some musicians not sugarcoat what some reissues truly are. Today, that musician is none other than Nine Inch Nails singer Trent Reznor.

Earlier today (July 14), Reznor took to his Twitter account to tell fans to ignore purchasing a new reissue of Nine Inch Nails' 1989 album, 'Pretty Hate Machine.'


"NIN fans, don't waste your money on this version of PHM that was just released," he wrote, linking to the reissue in question, which has a disclaimer stating this is "very similar to original TVT version. This is not a remastered release."

"...a record label bulls--- move repackaging the old version," Reznor tweeted shortly after. "Ignore please."

Nine Inch Nails gave the album the reissue treatment last November with all of the tracks remastered by Reznor and engineer Tom Baker while also including a cover of Queen's 'Get Down, Make Love,' the B-side to the 1990 single 'Sin.'

In related news, on July 12, Reznor's side project, How to Destroy Angels, posted a new photo labeled "recording" on their site. The group released a six-song self-titled EP for free just over a year ago, so let's hope this means more tunes are on the way, and soon.

Finally, Reznor also shared his excitement over the digital download system Spotify reaching American shores (which Spinner reported earlier today) by tweeting a link offering people a special celebrity invitation to try the service.

So, fans, please don't use Spotify to purchase the new 'Pretty Hate Machine' reissue. There's no use in getting on Trent Reznor's bad side.



Watch Nine Inch Nails' 'Head Like a Hole' Video

When Cassini Met Nine Inch Nails

Analysis by Ian O'Neill

What do you get when you mix space exploration with an industrial rock band? If you're thinking a bunch of Klingons trying their hand at slash metal, you're not the only one. However, if you asked designer/director Chris Abbas a very different blend of space music would result.
Using archival footage from the Cassini Solstice mission, which continues to dazzle us earthlings with incredible imagery from the Saturnian system, and a tune from the band Nine Inch Nails, a rather surprising -- and atmospheric -- experience awaits:

CASSINI MISSION from cabbas on Vimeo.

CASSINI MISSION from Chris Abbas on Vimeo.

Accompanying his video, Abbas has included an inspiring account of his motivation behind creating "Cassini Mission":

I truly enjoy outer space. It's absolutely amazing that we now have the ability to send instruments out into the void of the universe to observe all sorts of interesting things. Asteroids! Moons! Planets! Dark matter! This is the perfect opportunity for a Carl Sagan quote:
"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
The footage in this little film was captured by the hardworking men and women at NASA with the Cassini Imaging Science System.

As with many of the "Space Music" articles we include on Discovery News, the excellent "Cassini Mission" epitomizes the crossovers between music and space exploration. Space is a human endeavor, so it's always a pleasure to bring the spirit of humanity into space.
Video credit: Chris Abbas. Including footage from NASA's Cassini mission and music by Nine Inch Nails. Video used with permission.

Trent Reznor to shift focus back to NIN

By Emily Zemler

From http://www.myspace.com/

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Trent Reznor may have claimed retirement from Nine Inch Nails, but it sounds like the recent Oscar winner is already preparing to revitalize the act that made him famous. Reznor posted a lengthy blog on the NIN forum this week discussing his future plans and clarifying a few misunderstandings.
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“The three columns of things I’m currently funneling music into – HTDA, NIN and film work – I believe will start to make more sense to you (and me) as everything unfolds,” he wrote, referring to his new band How To Destroy Angels. “By having a few different outlets for my work I’m finding more inspiration within each one. No, Nine Inch Nails is not dead and I plan to focus on that next.”
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He added, “Perhaps I misspoke on the red carpet or wherever it was I said the new How To Destroy Angels record is finished – it is not. We’ve been working since last summer on it and are due to mix it this summer for a fall release. We’ve spent a lot of time experimenting and finding our own sound and identity this time around and we’re very happy with the results.”
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Renzor is also confirmed to be scoring David Fincher’s upcoming film-adaptation of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which will be out late this year. “Atticus [Ross] and I are hard at work scoring David’s next film, which will be opening this Christmas,” Reznor wrote. “We’ve been composing quite a bit of music for this and have just begun to see some of what’s been shot. Trust me when I say this film (and of course the music!) will not disappoint.”
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As for that other project Reznor is said to be doing? It’s apparently true. He will be scoring and appearing in the film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter — which was supposed to be a surprise. “The idea was a cameo-esque role that would be kept under wraps and be a surprise around opening night,” Reznor wrote. “I was considering this when I awoke a few days ago to the news I am now STARRING in ALVH (which is obviously not true). Fuck. We both apparently forgot the internet existed AND THERE ARE NO SURPRISES anymore.”

Trent Reznor Is Now A Pretty Oscar-Winning Hate Machine

Posted by Joshua_Kopstein

From http://motherboard.tv/

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This year, for the first time in at least a decade, I cared about the Oscars. I didn’t expect that I would, but sure enough, there I was: sat down with two friends over a bowl of homemade nachos, suffering through an ostentatious red carpet display to see who’d get their mitts on a few of those little gold men. Why? Because this year, only one film had gotten me hooked through its soundtrack alone. And it was going up against Hans Zimmer.

At first The Social Network had seemed like the dumbest idea in movie history: The tale of a petulant nerd who finds himself an overnight billionaire after building a website that forever shapes the online world into a crutch for his own social anxieties. Of course as we all know, the website, and the nerd who runs it, actually exist (although the nerd is perhaps more awkward than ruthless), and they’ve captured a decent chunk of the planet’s population. The addition of Aaron Sorkin on screenplay and David Fincher directing got me curious. But it wasn’t until it was announced that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails would be scoring the film that it had my full attention.



Maybe it was my inner angst-ridden 15 year-old self that allowed the smug grin to crawl over my face when Trent and Atticus walked up to grab the gold. Or maybe it was that many of us had never expected a soundtrack like this one to be recognized by the Academy. I realized at that moment how rare a score like The Social Network’s is, and how its prestigious recognition could represent a sea change in the appeal of experimental electronic music.

But I didn’t get ahead of myself. If anything, Reznor and Ross’ score is a shared victory for those already interested in the things like swarmatrons and stylophones. Still, there’s definitely something notable about how those otherworldly, deep-mooded textures and largely improvised instrumentation have played such an important role in defining the tone of a major film. Even if it’s a film about the world’s most awkward billionaire.

Trent, who is usually not too keen on award ceremonies, said the experience was “humbling and flattering beyond words.” The duo’s next project is a film adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, which we’re looking forward to because let’s be honest: these guys could make a Twilight movie sound good if they wanted.

Trent Reznor: 'I Am Truly Stunned' to Win an Oscar

by Stacey Wilson

from: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

Composing "The Social Network" was “the best experience I’ve ever had,” added the Nine Inch Nails frontman.

Turns out the competition was a magic feather for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

While the Nine Inch Nails frontman and his British composing partner each expressed disbelief over their winning best original score Oscar for their synthy, non-orchestral soundtrack to The Social Network, Reznor revealed a surprising anecdote about his road to Oscar glory.

“[Inception] composer, Hans Zimmer, who I’ve been battling at awards shows all year, told me, ‘In a lot of ways, I hope you win because it’s helped open up the field a bit for texture of what film scores can be,’ ” Reznor told reporters backstage. “I am truly stunned by this. David [Fincher] bugged us to do it. I’m very glad we did. It’s been the best experience I’ve ever had from start to finish.”

Reznor, who'd already “put Nine Inch Nails on the back burner" when Fincher approached him to score Network (the two had previously together on the creepy title sequence to Fincher's 1995 film Seven) admitted that movie composing was never in his plans.

"Thankfully David had a very clear idea of what he wanted,” said Reznor. “The only immediate direction he gave us was that there be no orchestra, be similar to Bladerunner -- inhabit the same iconic quality -- but not sound dated. It was definitely difficult to score for a bunch of people talking in rooms. There were no landscapes, or battles scenes. It wasn’t obvious to us what shape it would have."

For his part, Ross said he’d “been stunned” by every bit of recognition the pair had garnered throughout award season and only when the two received an Oscar nomination did he believe their Academy Award changes. “That morning I thought, ‘Wow, this is a reality.’ I’ve come in with no expectations. It’s been incredible.”

It’s a long way from the day the musicians saw Fincher’s first cut of the film. “We watched 45 minutes, and it had more dialogue than in last 10 films I’d seen combined. That was a quiet car ride home,” Ross said.
Next up for the Oscar-winning composers? They are currently scoring Fincher's next film, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Nine Inch Nails To Reissue Pretty Hate Machine

By Seraphina L.
from http://beatcrave.com/

If there are any bitter Nine Inch Nails fans out there because they haven’t been too happy with the band’s hiatus nor are they satisfied with the former frontman’s project with his wife, How To Destroy Angels – and definitely not welcoming Reznor’s collaborative score with Atticus Ross for The Social Network, then this may be the one day they can crack a smile of approval if not one of joy.

Although we’re actually digging the material Reznor’s been working on lately, an announcement in regards to another reissue of NIN’s album, Pretty Hate Machine (via Consequence of Sound via TwentyFourBit), is pretty much going on top of everyone’s list. Details after the jump!

We say “another” reissue because the album was re-released in 2005. However this time around, Reznor claims this release will have the album sounding like “a greatly improved sonic experience.” He also went in to further detail on the official NIN website:

“It’s been an interesting trip watching the fate of this record float from one set of hands to another (a long and depressing story) but it’s finally wound up in friendly territory, allowing us to polish it up a bit and present it to you now. We had fun revisiting this old friend, hope you enjoy.”

The reissue will be available to hold in all your needy NIN hands on November 22nd via The Bicycle Music Company and UMe Records. Check the tracklist out below!

Pretty Hate Machine 2010 Reissue Tracklist:

01. Head Like a Hole
02. Terrible Lie
03. Down In It
04. Sanctified
05. Something I Can Never Have
06. Kinda I Want To
07. Sin
08. That’s What I Get
09. The Only Time
10. Ringfinger
11. Get Down, Make Love (Queen cover)

Trent Reznor Developing Sci-Fi Epic With HBO and BBC

By Lilledeshan Bose 

From  http://blogs.ocweekly.com/

 

 

Andrew Youssef/OC Weekly

According to the LA Times, Trent Reznor is working with HBO and BBC Worldwide Productions to develop "Year Zero," a sci-fi epic that NIN fans know well through Reznor's music and an Alternate Reality Game (ARG). He told the Times:

"We are in [the development phase of] pre-production with HBO and BBC [Worldwide Productions] to do a miniseries," Reznor said Monday. "It's exciting. I probably shouldn't say too much about it except that I understand that there's a thousand hurdles before anything shows up in your TV listing. It's been an interesting and very educational process and it cleared the HBO hurdle a few months ago and now we're writing drafts back and forth. So it's very much alive and incubating at the moment."

Reznor further added: 
"Year Zero" began (as so many things do in the music of Nine Inch Nails) from a place of wrenching emotion and sonic adventure. Reznor found himself increasingly outraged by the geopolitical situation during the Bush years and he wanted to express the fury in music, but he found himself bored by traditional approaches to protest music.

Head Like a Hole Meaning

From: http://www.shmoop.com/

How deep is your love for this song? Go deeper.

Nine Inch Nails has to be one of the modern-day recording industry's more unlikely multiplatinum success stories. Nine Inch Nails isn't really a band at all; it's really just a vehicle for the abrasive musical genius of Trent Reznor, who writes all NIN material and typically performs all instrumentation on NIN tracks. (For live shows, obviously, Reznor has to bring along some other musicians since he can't play everything at once.) So why should it be so surprising that NIN has sold more than 20 million records worldwide since its 1989 debut? Well, for one, when it all started Reznor was working as a janitor in a Cleveland recording studio, stealing unused studio time to lay down his musical vision while no paying customers were using the equipment. And that musical vision itself isn't quite what you'd usually expect for a bestselling pop artist; Reznor's music is deliberately challenging, if not even unpleasant, to listen to. And finally, Reznor hates the recording industry itself and has spent much of the last two decades feuding with his own record labels. Not exactly the usual recipe for selling tens of millions of albums, perhaps, but hey, somehow it worked.

And it really started working with "Head Like A Hole," the second single off NIN's debut album, Pretty Hate Machine (1989). The song wasn't dissimilar from the album's first single, "Down In It" (which was also the first song Reznor ever wrote). Both songs combined a drum-machine dance beat with raw vocals, layered sampling, and a generally dark mood. But "Head Like A Hole" was probably the more successful piece, more fully realizing Reznor's dark vision. The song remains a fan favorite staple of NIN live sets today, fully two decades after its first release. Some have even called it an anthem, the industrial-dance equivalent of Nirvana's groundbreaking grunge staple "Smells Like Teen Spirit," which emerged about the same time and plumbed similar themes of alienation and sexualized angst.

Thrasher magazine captured well Reznor's genius in describing Pretty Hate Machine as "the clammy warmth of psychosexual angst set against the detached cold of coarse rhythmic aggression. NIN is an entrancing juxtaposition of imagery and energy built on a foundation of intermingled repulsion and desire." Songs like "Head Like A Hole" offer an intoxicating blend of attraction and repulsion, heat and cold, passion and detachment, agony and alienation. "Head Like A Hole" is, like "Teen Spirit," a song for the disillusioned. With its lyrical tirade against those greedy ones who lust after wealth as if it were "God Money," becoming sucked into its seductive wickedness, this song is told from a non-mainstream American point of view. This is a song that people who'd reject the dominant socio-economic ideologies of the Age of Reagan. At the same time, it's also a song of more carnal and perhaps even deviant passions; suggestive lines like "nail me up against the wall" were carnal enough to help turn Trent Reznor into a sexual icon of the goth world in the '90s.

The binaries established in the lyrics are echoed in the way the music plays against itself. Trent Reznor himself insightfully described Pretty Hate Machine as an album "about juxtaposing human imperfections against very rigid, sterile, cold arrangements. You can't just have icy vocals over icy music. If the music is very precise, make a vocal tape that's less perfect, so you've got this meshing of man versus machine." Clearly we've got an artist who knows what he's doing here. How does "man versus machine" work in context of the meaning of the song, its attractiveness as an "anthem," with regard to the music itself?

You do not have to be a musicologist to make some observations about the music and the vocals. The music is, as Reznor said, very precise. With most instruments synthesized electronically, this is machine-cut precision, if you will, like a finely crafted watch. Then there's the looping of various samples, which also feels precise and mechanical. The vocals, however, are very much the opposite. Reznor said that they were imperfect, and as a result he sounds very emotional and honest. The opposition of cold music and hot vocals echoes the lyrical theme of opposition between righteous "us" versus the greedy "thems." The bloated, distorted, robotic, yet sexual grind of the music contributes to the sense of what God Money is all about, while Reznor's single-take vocals ring out as a lone voice in angry opposition. (This could almost be the soundtrack to Ridley Scott's famous "Big Brother" Apple TV commercial.) Indeed, Reznor sings as if he were one of the bruised upon whose backs God Money and his hedonistic followers carelessly dance. And there is power in that; Reznor's anger and imperfection translates into a charged, energetic honesty that is, frankly, inspiring.

What is This Instrument in a New Trent Reznor Song?

What is This Instrument in a New Trent Reznor Song?

Posted by Sean_Yeaton

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It’s the Dewanatron Swarmatron, of course!

So, Trent Reznor is back with his first musical alms since Nine Inch Nails. The project, named after British industrial noise band, How to Destroy Angels, is a collaboration with his wife, former West Indian Girl frontwoman Mariqueen Maandig.

What we’ve heard so far is really cool, and I for one am really excited about the Dewanatron Swarmatron getting some love in this video. The mysterious synth – though perhaps not as mysterious as this one – was created to produce eight tones tuned approximately to one note, each tone slightly different in pitch to produce a complex and natural choral effect.

Best of all, it’s played with a single taffy-like controller that moves the pitch center up or down.

The Swarmatron was developed by Sculptors, electronic musicians, inventors and cousins, Brian and Leon Dewan. The Dewan’s have a whole fleet of homespun electronic instruments that you should definitely check out, here

You can buy it here: http://bigcitymusic.com/product.asp?cat=new&pid=1000896

How to Destroy Angels: "A Drowning"

From: http://pitchfork.com/

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Hear Trent Reznor's first music since Nine Inch Nails.

Here it is, Trent Reznor's first musical offering since the end of Nine Inch Nails: How to Destroy Angels' seven-minute downtempo slither "A Drowning".

As previously reported, How to Destroy Angels is Reznor's collaboration with his wife, former West Indian Girl frontwoman Mariqueen Maandig. They will release their self-titled debut EP this summer. All we know about this track is that it was mixed by Alan Moulder, who has worked with Nine Inch Nails in the past.

Check out the How to Destroy Angels website for frequent updates of mysterious video snippets.

Posted by Amy Phillips on May 4, 2010 at 8 a.m.

How to Destroy Angels = Trent Reznor + Wife?

by Kiran Aditham

Rumors have been swirling today that a new project called How to Destroy Angels is perhaps the collaboration between Trent Reznor and his wife, Mariqueen Maandig of West Indian Girl. Consequence of Sound received a cryptic email from a publicist that says a 6-track EP will be out this summer and it includes the URL for the "band" website. Though the site features little else but what could be the album art and an equally mysterious 40-second video (below), the lady on the cover does resemble Mariqueen and the music bears all the sonic similarities to NIN's Year Zero. If anything, Reznor's stated in the past that he is a fan of Coil and How to Destroy Angels is one of said band's earliest, best releases.

NIN fans collaborate on massive free DVD/Blu-ray

From: http://www.nin.com
posted by  rob

Our 2008 Lights In The Sky tour was an ambitious multimedia production on a scale well beyond anything we'd ever attempted before. Everyone involved was extremely proud of how it came together, and we were devastated when, for a variety of reasons, we were unable to capture it professionally for a theatrical or commercial release. As a "plan B" of sorts, early last year we released a massive 405gb free download of raw HD footage captured at three different shows during the tour. The idea was to get the footage out in the wild and see what our notoriously enterprising fans could do with it. There were no rules. No strings attached. This was a gift, and an experiment, and for the past year we've watched it come to life in more ways than we could have ever imagined.

Fans have edited thousands of videos from the footage, assembled their own DVDs and live albums, even held theatrical screenings of their creations. And now, the ambitious and well-organized group known as This One Is On Us have released their massive, highly-anticipated creation, Another Version of the Truth: The Gift.

For 12 months, a core team of dozens of fans and a network of thousands spanning the entire globe pooled their efforts to create this professional-quality 1080p 5.1 concert film, and have released it in every format from Blu-ray and DVD to iPod and YouTube. It combines footage from all three shows and includes DVD menus, bonus footage, a PDF booklet, and more. That something of this scale was produced entirely by fans, on their own time, purely for the sake of giving something back to the community, is absolutely unprecedented. You can read all about the project and find all the download links here, or watch it immediately on YouTube here. Theatrical screenings are already being organized, you can find more info about those here.

This is yet another example of a devoted fanbase and a policy of openness combining to fill in blanks left by old media barriers. The entire NIN camp is absolutely thrilled that treating our fans with respect and nurturing their creativity has led to such an overwhelming outpour of incredible content, and that we now have such a high quality souvenir from our most ambitious tour ever. Or, as Trent simply put it, "Nine Inch Nails fans kick ass."

Trent Reznor Celebrates 20 Years of NIN’s “Pretty Hate Machine”

After over three months of dormancy, Trent Reznor’s Twitter page was resurrected last night as the Nine Inch Nails frontman celebrated the 20th anniversary of his debut album Pretty Hate Machine. “Happy birthday, old friend. Pretty Hate Machine turns 20,” Reznor wrote, his first tweet since quitting Twitter following a July 17th message that read, “I believe I’ve done all I care to do here at this point. Flesh and reality and silence are calling.” Reznor’s call out to his first LP helped make #PrettyHateMachine a Twitter Trending Topic last night.

Check out photos of NIN’s last-ever live gig.

Pretty Hate Machine was released on October 20th, 1989 on TVT Records, introducing music fans to hits like “Head Like a Hole,” “Down In It,” “Terrible Lie” and other synth-goth classics. The New Rolling Stone Album Guide awarded PHM four-and-a-half stars, crediting Nine Inch Nails for being “on to something that no one else had quite figured out yet” and labeling Reznor as “an artist already near the top of his game.”

If you’re looking to celebrate Pretty Hate Machine’s 20th anniversary by downloading the album off a digital service, you’re out of luck: The official NIN Twitter announced yesterday that a legal download isn’t available since the band doesn’t own the rights to PHM, but import copies of the CD are available. (The rights issue has always made finding a physical copy of PHM in stores quite difficult over the past decade.) Reznor retired NIN as a touring band last month, capping the band’s live run with an epic final gig in Los Angeles.

More NIN live: onstage shots from the band’s tour with Jane’s Addiction.

Fittingly, the same week we’re celebrating the 20th anniversary of a song called “Ringfinger,” Reznor married Mariqueen Maandig in a ceremony this weekend, Rolling Stone reported.

Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor Ties the Knot

Brandi Fowler, eonline

Trent Reznor

Trent Reznor wrote a song called "Ringfinger" on his first album, and now he's finally ready to put something on that digit.

The 44-year-old Nine Inch Nails star married Mariqueen Maandig in a ceremony Saturday, E! News has learned.

Former West Indian Girl singer Maandig announced news of their engagement on the band's website in May.

The groom's bandmate, Danny Lohner, broke news of the newlyweds' nuptials via twitter, tweeting "Goths the world over will mourn this day – off to a wedding" and posted a pic of the newlyweds dancing together with the caption "Congrats!"

Celebrity photographer Robert Evans, who shot Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes ' wedding, as well as that of Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, photographed the ceremony.

Trent Reznor Quits Web 2.0, Offers Cutting Advice To Haters

Odds are that if you have a Twitter account, you're one of the 640,000+ people following @trent_reznor. And one of 640,000+ people having their images of him systematically reformed one lovesick tweet at a time. Anyway, all that's over now: With what is apparently one last twit, Trent linked to a lengthy missive he posted on the NIN forum explaining the thinking behind "lowering the curtain" on his angsty mystique and making himself more approachable, and the attendant, inevitable fallout. Fallout which has become too distracting and destructive for him to bear, so he's retiring his Web 2.0 presence. If you're looking for someone to blame, try this guy (who made a big stink when Trent was trying to raise money for his ill fan), or the girls at Metal Sludge (a forum of "unattractive plump females ... people NOBODY will fuck [who] make up stories about their incredible sexual encounters with people they WISH they could fuck"). By the way if you're a poster over at MS, Trent offers some handy advice on how better to cut your veins. Because he cares. Here's the unedited dispatch, typically articulate, worth a few minutes of your day:

It's been an interesting experiment over the last couple of years or so. Faced with leaving the infrastructure of traditional record labels and figuring out what the right thing to do is in this new world - I found myself realizing that for me to have any concept of how to interact with the community and know what they might want / what they find appropriate, I need to immerse myself in that world and live it for a while. The reason no record label knows how to market anything to new media is they don't live there. They don't get it because they don't use it. What you've seen happen with the marketing and presentation of NIN over the last years is a direct result of living next to you, listening to you, consuming with you and interacting with you. Directly. There's no handlers or PR people here, it's me and my guys - that's it. There's no real plan, even - it's just trying to do the right thing that respects you the fan, the music, and me the artist. That's the goal - a mutual and shared respect.

When Twitter made it's way to my radar I looked at it as a curiosity, then started experimenting. I thought it through and in light of where I was / am in my career I decided to lower the curtain a bit and let you see more of my personality. I watched some of you get more engaged because you started to realize there's a person (flaws and all) back there, and I watched some of you recoil in horror because I'm not what you projected on me. All expected. I'm not as concerned about "breaking" your idea of NIN at this point. It is what it is and I am what I am. The relationship between artist and fan is changing if you haven't noticed, along with the way we consume and experience music and even communicate since the internet arrived.

The problem with really getting engaged in a community is getting through the clutter and noise. In a closed environment like nin.com a lot of this can be moderated away, or code can be implemented to make it more difficult for troublemakers to persist. It's tedious and feels like wasted energy doing that shit, but some people exist to ruin it for others - and they are the ones who have nothing better to do with their time. Example: on nin.com, there's 3-4 different people that each send me between 50 - 100 message per day of delusional, often threatening nonsense. We can delete them, but they just sign back up and start again. Yes, we are implementing several changes to address this, but the point is it quickly gets very old weeding through that stuff.

Back to Twitter. I approached that as a place to be less formal and more off-the-cuff, honest and "human". I was not expecting to broadcast details of my love life there, but it happened because I'm in love and it's all I think about and that's that. If this has bummed you out or destroyed what you've projected on me, fair enough - it's probably time for you to leave. You are right, I'm not the same person I was in 1994 (and I'm happy about that). Are you?

Looks like the Metal Sludge contingency has discover Twitter! Finally! For those of you that don't know what this is, please let me explain. Metal Sludge is the home of the absolutely worst people I've ever come across. It's populated mainly by unattractive plump females who publicly fantasize about having sex with guys in bands. Kind of like a role-playing game where people NOBODY will fuck make up stories about their incredible sexual encounters with people they WISH they could fuck. It would be kind of funny in a sad and pathetic way except the fun doesn't stop there - hate and good old-fashioned outright blatant racism are also encouraged to spice things up and remind you how truly ugly these scourges are. TRULY ugly on the inside (the outside is obvious).

Cutter's tip for my friends there: remember to cut along the length of vein, not across. Bigger payoff.

So when you see the new accounts that pop up daily on Twitter spewing exactly the kind of thing I just discussed, usually from picture-less creatively named profiles, spewing hate at Mariqueen and I, take a moment to visualize the sad couple people behind them.
A few years ago some people tuned me in to that world and when I figured out who these people were, I was amazed that I'd been seeing them in the front rows of the shows for months. I really don't understand what kind of "fan" spends that kind of time and money to travel across the country seeing a band, to then dedicate an incredible amount of time and energy into non-stop hate diatribes online. That one puzzles me a little.

Anyway, I'm bored on a long bus drive and there's no real moral to the story here, just writing. I will be tuning out of the social networking sites because at the end of the day it's now doing more harm than good in the bigger picture and the experiment seems to have yielded a result. Idiots rule.

I had thought a while ago about attempting to start a mainstream public forum that required real verification of it's participants for purposes of context. The idea was to have a place where you can actually discuss whatever and have some idea of who you're conversing with. For example, if we were discussing drumming techniques and you can see that someone participating in the discussion is a drum instructor vs. a 13 year old kid Googling answers, you'd have the proper context in which to have a potentially valid discussion. If we were discussing EDLC's heart condition and a real cardiologist speaks up, I'd value his opinion over, say FredFuckFaceWhateverHisLastFuckingNameIs's "opinion". Know what I mean? Anyway, we're in a world where the mainstream social networks want any and all people to boost user numbers for the big selloff and are not concerned with the quality of experience.

With all of that said, I have business in the real world to attend to including wrapping up the live version of NIN, DOING some cool new shit and spending as much time as possible with the most amazing woman in the world.

It's been fun, Trent.

Trent Reznor: The Biggest Wake-Up Call of My Career

Rocker TRENT REZNOR is urging all musicians to follow in his footsteps and ditch their record labels.
Reznor's band Nine Inch Nails broke away from their deal with Universal in 2007, after a tempestuous relationship with the music giant.
The singer describes the experience as "liberating" - insisting big labels make too much money from musicians and are completely out of touch with the industry.
Reznor says, "Anyone who's an executive at a record label does not understand what the internet is, how it works, how people use it, how fans and consumers interact - no idea. I'm surprised they know how to use email. They have built a business around selling plastic discs, and nobody wants plastic discs any more. They're in such a state of denial it's impossible for them to understand what's happening.
"One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract. I said, 'Wait - you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it? Who the f**k made that rule? Oh! The record labels made it because artists are dumb and they'll sign anything' - like I did. When we found out we'd been released (from their recording contract) it was like, 'Thank God!'. But 20 minutes later it was, 'Uh-oh, now what are we going to do?' It was incredibly liberating, and it was terrifying."
And Reznor adds that musicians should be exploring other ways to sell their own music, rather than relying on labels: "As an artist, you are now the marketer."

07/04/2009 19:01

Trent

Nine Inch Nails iPhone App Extends Reznor's Innovative Run

By Frank Rose

LOS ANGELES — Trent Reznor was backstage one afternoon last summer, fooling around with his iPhone to stave off boredom before a show, when he realized that fans standing in line outside were broadcasting photos from the scene using their iPhones.

So he took the obvious next step: Using Twinkle, the same Twitter app the fans were using, he started sending out photos from backstage. And so an idea was born.

"We started thinking, 'Hey, this could be pretty cool,'" Reznor recalls. A few days from now, the results should be up on Apple's App Store for anyone to use.

The free Nine Inch Nails app, scheduled for release as soon as it gets final approval from Apple, is a mobile window on all things NIN: music, photos, videos, message boards, even — thanks to a GPS-enabled feature called Nearby — the fans themselves.

Nearby is "kind of like Twitter within the Nine Inch Nails network," says Rob Sheridan, Reznor's long-time collaborator. "You can post a message or a photo by location, and if you're at a show you can see conversations between other people who are right there."

Fans have had their curiosity stoked by hints about the iPhone app that have shown up on Reznor's Twitter feed.

"We're all waiting for it," says Brandon Dusseau, a Milwaukee-based web designer who's one of the founders of NinWiki, one of the group's leading unofficial fan sites. "I'm sure it will get tons of downloads, and I'm hoping it will be a really cool resource. But all I know is, it's coming out soon."

In an exclusive interview at Reznor's home, a coolly modern structure high above the Westside region of Los Angeles, Reznor and Sheridan previewed the new app and explained how it fits in with their plans for survival in a post-label world.

The iPhone app is the culmination, at least for now, of a process that began a year-and-a-half ago, when Nine Inch Nails succeeded in extracting itself from its contract with Universal Music Group's Interscope label.

"When we found out we'd been released it was like, 'Thank god!'" says Reznor, trim and beefy in black jeans and a black T-shirt. "But 20 minutes later it was, 'Uh-oh, now what are we going to do?' It was incredibly liberating, and it was terrifying."

Since then, Reznor has pioneered a new, fan-centered business model that radically breaks with the practices of the struggling music industry. His embrace of "freemium" pricing, torrent distribution, fan remixes and social media seem to be paying off financially even as they have helped him forge deeper connections with the Nine Inch Nails faithful.

It's something he never could have done before, even on an indie label. "Anyone who's an executive at a record label does not understand what the internet is, how it works, how people use it, how fans and consumers interact — no idea," he declares. "I'm surprised they know how to use e-mail. They have built a business around selling plastic discs, and nobody wants plastic discs any more."

Meanwhile, the entire system that for a lucky few turned those discs into hits — rock radio, MTV, music mags, CD megastores — has crumbled, and label execs have no idea where to turn. "They're in such a state of denial it's impossible for them to understand what's happening," Reznor says. "As an artist, you are now the marketer."

And the only marketing vehicle that makes sense is the net. Reznor and Sheridan had used it successfully before, in the alternate-reality game they created with 42 Entertainment to explain NIN's 2007 album, Year Zero. But what else should they do? The Radiohead experiment — offer downloads online and ask people to pay what they want — struck him as an invitation to be insulted.

So after selling music for nearly 20 years, Reznor decided to give it away. He would expand NIN's website into an all-inclusive resource fans could use to find not just tour dates but photos, video, music — "a one-stop shop for every bit of information you could ever want," he says. Everything in the shop — including The Slip, his most recent album — would be free.

"I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't think music should be free," Reznor says. "But the climate is such that it's impossible for me to change that, because the record labels have established a sense of mistrust. So everything we've tried to do has been from the point of view of, 'What would I want if I were a fan? How would I want to be treated?' Now let's work back from that. Let's find a way for that to make sense and monetize it."

Over the past year, NIN.com has quietly evolved into a series of interlocking services designed to deliver maximum benefit to the fans at minimal expense to the artist. To build it out, Reznor decided to use off-the-shelf resources — Blogger, Twitter, FeedBurner, Flickr, YouTube — rather than trying to duplicate what other people had already created. "They're going to do a better job than we are," he explains, "and they're going to have a lot more resources to put into it."

"We're using what people are already using every day anyway," adds Sheridan, a smaller figure with a three-day growth of beard and pale, wolf-blue eyes. "It's media on the fans' terms, how they want to use it, instead of trying to be like this" — he wraps his arms around his torso as if trying to hold himself in — "which is the old-media strategy."

Under the circumstances, it made little sense to try to manage what went up on the site. Why would they, when they had an army of people who'd relish the job? "We'll never outdo a community of obsessive fans," Reznor says. "People who have the same maniacal completion problem that Rob and I have playing videogames — let them funnel that shit into making our website cool."

To put the fans to work, NIN's tech team — a Glendale, California, outfit called Sudjam — used the APIs for Flickr and YouTube to enable users to connect their NIN accounts with their accounts on those sites. That meant users could tag items on Flickr and YouTube and have them pop up on NIN.com, where other users will find them neatly ordered and ready for viewing. Sudjam expects to do the same for Photobucket and Vimeo shortly.

Obviously someone has to supervise all this, but Reznor has crowdsourced that function as well. NIN.com is mostly governed by fan moderators — unpaid superfans who enjoy special privileges on the site. "It becomes a source of pride for them," says Sheridan, "to make sure everything is what it says it is."

Next up: Incorporating a wiki into the site. The most likely candidate is NinWiki, which was built on MediaWiki, the open source software written for Wikipedia. By putting a fan wiki together with NIN.com's media galleries, which at last count comprised some 30,000 photos and videos, the utility of the data the two sites possess could increase exponentially.

"Here's this tour date from three years ago," Sheridan hypothesizes. "Through MediaWiki, the fans have entered in a set list. Each song is clickable, so you can see every show that song was ever played at. And it's tied into our image and video database, so you can also see every video that song appears in."

By making available — for free, of course — the individual tracks that make up the master recordings of his songs, Reznor has even crowdsourced the remix function. He released multi-track versions of his songs as early as 2005, but Interscope wasn't happy with the idea of putting fan remixes online. Now that he's been sprung from the label, that's no longer an issue.

At last count, NIN.com had 11,000 fan remixes available for streaming or download. Thanks to an XML feed, you can even subscribe to them as a podcast. "I doubt I'll ever pay someone to do a remix again," Reznor says, "because there's some amazing stuff just coming out of bedrooms."

Free downloads can cost a lot of money to deliver, especially when the options include better-than-CD sound quality. So for the higher-quality offerings, Reznor turned to BitTorrent — "the domain of pirates," he acknowledges, "but it's also a great technology that is free." Pirates are no longer the enemy anyway: "Our battle is against download costs."

To cover the costs of recording and distributing the album, Reznor also offered The Slip as a limited-edition CD for $10. Even as he urged fans to download and share the album online, he sold 250,000 numbered copies of the CD. The album is also available on iTunes for $9.90. "So we managed to permeate the marketplace," Reznor says, "and we also managed to monetize the album."

The one part of NIN.com that Reznor had custom-built is the piece that sits at the center of it all: the database of fan info that has been harvested from the registration process that's required to take full advantage of the site. That database, created by Sudjam, is what makes the tie-ins with Flickr and YouTube work, but it's also given Reznor 2 million e-mail addresses — which adds up to a pretty powerful distribution network.

"If The Slip had X number of downloads, we know who those people are and we'll reach out to them with the next thing we have," he says. A concert coming up in Atlanta? It's a simple matter to send out e-mails to everyone within a hundred-mile radius of the city. "That seems to be the most valuable thing you can get — a way to reach people," Reznor says.

Peter Jenner, one-time manager of Pink Floyd and The Clash and retired head of the International Music Managers' Forum, agrees.

"There’s an enormous value in having a relationship with your fans," he says. "More value even than in selling your records. I think old Trent's a sharp cookie."

Taking that connection mobile was the logical next step. "We created an app," Reznor says, "that reformats the website to make almost everything on it available in an iPhone-able version and also adds location-based awareness. This now brings it into the real world, where you can find people if you choose to."

When the band toured Europe last year, Sheridan regularly updated the site by posting pictures he'd snapped onstage. It was great, Reznor says: "People felt included. People kind of felt like they were getting postcards from us."

The iPhone app takes that a big step further. NIN.com has a Google Earth plug-in that fans can use to see conversations and photos from across the planet, or at a specific location. A feature on the iPhone app's Nearby tab will enable them to post messages and photos from their iPhones to the website and have them pop up in Google Earth.

All this is a long way from the powerlessness Reznor felt when he was starting out in Cleveland in the 1980s.

"One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract," he says. "I said, 'Wait — you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it? Who the fuck made that rule? Oh! The record labels made it because artists are dumb and they'll sign anything' — like I did."

Reznor is still experimenting, and it remains unclear how effective his methods will be for less-established bands. But by spurring him to try new ideas, ending his label affiliation has given him a tentative new business model as well as a new form of engagement with his fans.

If the labels had tried to connect with fans online instead of dragging them into court, he figures, the music industry wouldn't be collapsing today. But no matter; he's moved on.

"My quest in life now is to surround myself with smart, innovative people," he says, "instead of the gangster types who have exploited artists over the years."

- - -

Frank Rose is a contributing editor of Wired magazine. He is writing a book on how the internet is changing storytelling, and posting on the subject at his Deep Media blog.

Nine Inch Nails New Album 'Strobe Light' Produced by Timbaland

by Jarrett Martineau | April 1, 2009 at 10:59 am

Leave it Trent Reznor to push his evolving musical aesthetic in ever-more daring and innovative directions.

Reznor announced the release of a brand new Nine Inch Nails album, Strobe Light, on Wednesday — unexpectedly, produced by mega-pop hit maker Timbaland.

The album is a download-only exclusive on the NIN website featuring a strikingly beautiful portrait of Reznor clad in this season's most stylish sunglasses as its cover art.

For this special release, which Reznor is offering at the low, low price of only $18.98 for a digital download — plus a well-worth-it $10 "convenience fee" — NIN enlisted a who's who of experimental and underground artistic collaborators including: Bono, Fergie, Sheryl Crow, Justin Timberlake, Jay-Z to join the proceedings, in addition to contributions from noted musical new-comers like Al Jourgensen and Maynard James Keenan.

With Timbaland on board, and with tracks such as the triumphant "clap trap crack slap" and the soaring harmonies of "laid, paid and played" this could well be Reznor's Kid A — a singularly revolutionary and eerily melancholic vision of the future of contemporary music, filtered through the mind's eye of two modern day Mozarts.

Here's the full Strobe Light tracklisting:

1. intro skit
2. everybody's doing it (featuring chris martin, jay-z AND bono)
3. black t-shirt
4. pussygrinder (featuring sheryl crow)
5. coffin on the dancefloor
6. this rhythm is infected
7. slide to the dark side
8. even closer (featuring justin timberlake and maynard james keenan)
9. on the list (she's not)
10. clap trap crack slap
11. laid, paid and played (featuring fergie of the black eyed peas and al jourgensen)
12. feel like being dead again
13. still hurts (featuring alicia keys)
14. outro skit

Tour dates to follow? We can only hope so.

Announcing Digg Dialogg with Trent Reznor

by Kevin Rose

Hey everyone,

We’re mixing things up a bit for our next installment of Digg Dialogg on Tuesday, April 7th. I’m honored to announce music icon Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails (NIN) as our next guest. I will be asking him the top questions as submitted and voted on by the Digg community.

For those of you who aren’t current on Reznor’s career, he is best known as founding member and lead singer for NIN. NIN has sold more than 20 million albums worldwide, winning multiple Grammys. In 2007, Reznor split ties with his record label and is now an independent musician where he releases albums under a Creative Commons license, utilizing technologies such as BitTorrent to promote the sharing of his music. He is considered by the Los Angeles Times to be one of the most acclaimed creative figures of his generation of music. This is a great opportunity to find out what’s next for Reznor and gain insight into the rapidly evolving world of online music, entertainment, and technology.

Digg Dialogg gives the Digg community an opportunity to submit and vote up questions posed to influential leaders, change agents and luminaries. This marks our first foray into music with one of the leading personalities changing the way traditional music industry models work. In case you missed any of the previous Dialoggs with Speaker Pelosi, Al Gore, and Republican Leader John Boehner, you can check them out here.

Submit and vote for your favorite questions by Saturday, April 4th at 12noon PT and we will post a link to the interview on Tuesday, April 7th at 10am PT. We will also post updates to the Digg Twitter account.

We’ll be announcing more great guests soon, so stay tuned. Let us know who you’d like to hear from in future Digg Dialoggs by adding suggestions in the comments, but be sure to pose your questions for Trent Reznor on the Digg Dialogg page.

Thanks,
Kevin