NIN's Trent Reznor finds no more Happiness In Slavery

Long time readers of Anything that defies my sense of reason.... will be aware of one or two instances where the The Antagonist has taken more than a little pleasure watching the music, video and media oligopolies condemn themselves slowly and painfully to the annals of history through their reluctance and outright refusal to adapt to the way the world happens to be. Only a correct analysis of and adaptation to the material conditions of existence will result in the survival of any organism and time after time media organisations have failed to evolve, even though some of the temporary solutions are obvious.

Nine Inch Nails frontman and driving force Trent Reznor today struck out at the march of the pigs, the march of the corporate capitalist media pigs, who continue to exploit music makers and music lovers still gullible enough to regard a dollar's worth of plastic to be worth paying twenty to thirty times that.

Here's Trent Reznor on the subject:

Posted on [05_13_2007]

As the climate grows more and more desperate for record labels, their answer to their mostly self-inflicted wounds seems to be to screw the consumer over even more. A couple of examples that quickly come to mind:

* The ABSURD retail pricing of Year Zero in Australia. Shame on you, UMG. Year Zero is selling for $34.99 Australian dollars ($29.10 US). No wonder people steal music. Avril Lavigne's record in the same store was $21.99 ($18.21 US).

By the way, when I asked a label rep about this his response was: "It's because we know you have a real core audience that will pay whatever it costs when you put something out - you know, true fans. It's the pop stuff we have to discount to get people to buy."

So... I guess as a reward for being a "true fan" you get ripped off.

Not good for the fans, not good for the artists, and yet another nail in the coffin of the media oligopolies that can now count both music fans and music makers on their list of enemies.