Trent, Dude, Trent

Wired publishes an un cut interview with Reznor that was part of a piece earlier this year. Along with the Byrne piece earlier this week they seem to be working their cred as the leading authority on creative copyright issues in the digital era (a decade late, but the thought is nice). As long as I don't have to read the Long Tail, I can get on board with it.

Here's a little clip from this very long article.

For a band like Nine Inch Nails, and I would also add the Radioheads of the world in that camp, as opposed to the Gwen Stefanis and the Fergies, we genuinely have one spike of interest now. Two spikes of interest. And that would be when the record leaks, and when the retail release comes out. And the first one in my case is a ten out of ten. And the second one is a seven and a half out of ten, because the fans already have it. And then it's just their moral remembrance to go and actually and pay for one now. After that, it's consumed and passed along, discussed furiously and then it's forgotten. And then the next level of spike comes if we tour. It used to be you had the advance single that would get some kind of bit of interest, the release date would be a ten out of ten, and then the single that comes out, the second single with a video with it. Now it doesn't make any sense monetarily to really make videos unless you can do them cheaply, because there are no outlets for them any more, because MTV's too concerned about lifestyle reality programming. There is a reason to do it on YouTube. And I found out throughout Europe they still play videos a fair amount. But where that differs from say the Fergie Gwen Stefani model, they still have those videos and they have an audience that might be technically less on top of it, maybe. But they still get dictated what to listen to, and radio still plays those things and they do what they're told in that camp. In our camp it comes out, it goes through channels, and that's where it stays. So, my theory was, after the record leaks I don't have any surprises left in terms of the music for the record. But before it leaks I've got 15 surprises. How can I seed them out in the way that I would like people to hear it? Like as an artist in a perfect world everyone would get the record at the same time, and everyone would stop what they're doing and go into a place that sounds nice, take the phone off, listen to it from start to finish, think about it, listen to it again from start to finish, go to bed that night. In the real world now its' terrible quality bootlegs file shared, I've got the third song, you've got the second song and it's jumbled around and it's — because music is primarily free I think people just want to get more and more and more. Compared to when I was growing up, I had $10 to spend on a record, I listened to that record, and I got my $10 worth, even if I may not have liked it. I fucking bought it, let me — now you just have all the stuff. I've got a lot of shit on my iPod I haven't listened to yet, you know. And it does have less value because it's free. So, what we did was strategically linked out songs ahead of time via methods we could use in the game and the story that would direct people and (taint) them what I wanted them to think about the record before the bulk of it came out. And generally it would be this is not what the rest of it sounds like, get them scratching their beards for a minute. A couple weeks later, here's something else that doesn't even sound like it's even the same band. Oh, throw them for a loop. And then punch them when the whole thing leaks out.