homemade noize

“08 October 2007: Big News

Hello everyone. I’ve waited a LONG time to be able to make the
following announcement: as of right now Nine Inch Nails is a totally
free agent, free of any recording contract with any label. I have
been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the
business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very
different and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a
direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate.
Look for some announcements in the near future regarding 2008.
Exciting times, indeed.”

Amazon’s newish mp3 download service is DRM free. And now Microsoft the Godfather of being a pain in the ass to its costumers and a early adopter and promoter of DRM are going to have over a million DRM free downloads for the Zune service though some music will still have DRM. A million is still a big number. I know the RIAA won that $220,000 lawsuit that has been widely reported but if it stands which is questionable the blacklash of that precedent I suspect will be worse than any benefit for the RIAA. Please notice that I say the RIAA and not the Industry. The Music Industry contains a lot of people that the RIAA or it actions have never benefited any those people are mostly the creative people that make the whole thing possible. The guys running this big labels basically Ivy League MBA’s that are middle management in a division of a huge Global Corporation. They are trying to climb the ladder to bigger stock options and bigger golden parachutes. Do you think they give a shit about the music?

The real reason that I think things are going to change is logic. If Radiohead can have financial success releasing the album themselves what reason do other well established acts have to share the profits with a major label and in the process possibly have less control over the music and the creative process. If they are big enough people will easily find out about there news music. Look at the stir this caused. If they wanted the promotion a label would provide they could hire a PR firm for less than what it would cost them from the label. They only advantages of the big label is distribution of physical copies of the music and getting the music on the radio. Those to things are getting less important everyday. A lot of acts or certain genres that sell well never get played on the radio now days anyway. And people still are more and more likely to get Cd’s through the mail than form a store and there is nothing stopping bands form selling physical copies of the music through the mail. I hope big acts just say why am I dealing these assholes I can just put it up on my site. And I hope as more contracts expire we will see more of this.

For less well know bands need there is even less of a reason to use a major label of one of the “boutique labels”under the umbrella of a major label. If you thing advance or the promotion or guidance is a major label is a good thing read this. It is so much easier to promote yourself on the web and even produce an music yourself. Alot of people managed against the odds to do this before the Internet. It is just so much more effective now. The hard thing for small acts was getting distribution beyond selling tapes and Cd’s at show an local record stores that a buddy worked in. Now you can sell in worldwide on your website. I and even if you sell a little less you keep more of the money or maybe just some of the money actually. And doing it your way I think should be considered priceless.

The RIAA & Major Labels are not going away anytime soon. They probably will not learn a damn thing from anything new happening. But still I think things can get better and will get better.

BTW I like the album Bodysnatchers is a great track.