Just when you thought they were out of the woods, Nine Inch Nails is thwarted once more by their ex-label. After expressing extreme distaste with the company’s distribution of the band’s music, leading man Trent Reznor officially broke ties with Interscope Records/Universal Management last month.
Freed from the stifling grasp of their label, NIN went forward with plans to digitally release their remix album Y34RZ3R0R3MIX3D. Unfortunately, instead of finding the jazzed up recordings that were supposed to drop today, when fans went to the designated site they were redirected to Nine Inch Nails' home page where words from Reznor awaited them.
Basically, even though NIN has divorced itself from Universal, the company still holds the rights to all of the bands master files. At the moment, Universal is also involved in a law suit against other media groups like the ones behind YouTube (Google) and MySpace (NewsCorp). They believe that these media companies are violating copyright laws due to users’ ability to upload music, film, etc. without legal permission from Universal. To avoid looking hypocritical, the record company does not feel that they can allow NIN to have a site that essentially has the same free flow of information as the media outlets they are prosecuting.
In reaction to this decision, Reznor had this to say:
"While I am profoundly perturbed with this stance as content owners continue to stifle all innovation in the face of the digital revolution, it is consistent with what they have done in the past. So... we are challenged at the last second to find a way of bringing this idea to life without getting splashed by the urine as these media companies piss all over each other’s feet. We have a cool and innovative site ready to launch but we're currently scratching our heads as to how to proceed."
Hopefully, Reznor and Co. will be able to find a loophole to get through this. Until then, we will all just have to be satisfied with the plain version of Year Zero and keep our fingers crossed that all this corporate muckery will resolve itself soon.
Related links:
NIN.com
Remix.NIN.com
NIN on MySpace
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