Meeting Trent Reznor, and How Artists Can’t Be Successful with Record Labels. • 06.12.09
Trent Reznor seems to be getting a lot of play on this blog, but perhaps that’s because the guy is so forward thinking about the music industry and likes to talk about it.
Reznor’s band, Nine Inch Nails, is on their “final” American tour this summer. They were through Kansas City a couple of weeks ago, and I scored a backstage pass.
We had a short Q&A session with Trent, during which he said, “[bands] can’t making money on record labels any more. Or if they do get paid, they have to sue the label.”
WellMixed was started because I had observed that artists are often just as well financially on their own without a label. Trent’s statement re-enforced that idea, and I did a quick Google search to see how many artists were suing their labels to get paid for their art. Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Smashing Pumpkins, Hawthorne Heights, The Allman Brothers, and Bay City Rollers were all in the first couple pages of results.
