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As if you already didn’t know, Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails’ frontman, also “gets” it. “It” meaning that the music business, as we once knew it, died some time ago. Also, he thinks Radiohead’s In Rainbows was a stunt more than anything else.
Reznor, in speaking with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, called out Radiohead for releasing its latest album in “MySpace-quality.” He’s referring to the genuinely subpar audio quality of the digital download, which was only a collection of 160kbps MP3s. Compare this to Nine Inch Nails’ latest album, Ghosts, which he’s made available in all sorts of formats, including FLAC, Apple Lossless and 320 kbps LAME MP3. That’s $5 for an entire FLAC album—that’s foresightedness.
Basically, Reznor is saying that Radiohead half-assed it and undeservingly benefited from the hype. (We probably got caught up in the hype, too. What happened to my trademark cynicism last fall?) Note that Radiohead still depends on a record label, while NIN has completely divorced itself from the “inept.”
Let’s not forget that NIN also released the first volume of Ghosts on popular BitTorrent trackers, no doubt winning the band (or however you want to classify it) some brownie points with “elite” music fans.
Good on Reznor.
Reznor: Radiohead offering was insincere, industry is inept [Ars Technica]