In case you missed it, we've got some great video of Kevin Rose of Digg.com interviewing Trent Rezor about all things Nails, from what looks to be Reznor's base of operations.
Kevin picked out ten of the “top dugg” questions from Digg users, and Trent spent forty minutes answering each and every one, touching on everything from Nine Inch Nails’ upcoming hiatus to the now-dead Tapeworm project with Danny Lohner and Tool/Puscifer frontman Maynard James Keenan. They also dig quite a bit into gaming, a possible upcoming TV series, and streaming live concerts to theaters and online (in 3D!)
The coolest part, however, had very little to do with the music itself - directly, anyway. He shares some of his ideas on how artists can effectively market music directly to fans without a label, and the guy's not just blowing smoke. In recent years Reznor's become the poster boy for modern artist etiquette, having paved the way for an entirely new music business attitude through forward-thinking marketing concepts that center on communicating with fans directly, rather than the onion-layered bureaucracy that's been the norm for so long. Reznor never hides behind a larger-than-life character persona, instead representing himself as a real person, very frequently posting updates to his own site and sharing his insights/fears/hopes/frustrations with his fans directly. He's even active on Twitter. Why? Because he's been on the other side. He knows precisely what kind of racket the labels are pulling, and he wants no part of it.
“One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract," Reznor recalls. "I said, ‘Wait - you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it? Who the f**k made that rule? Oh! The record labels made it because artists are dumb and they’ll sign anything’ - like I did. When we found out we’d been released (from their recording contract) it was like, ‘Thank God!’. But 20 minutes later it was, ‘Uh-oh, now what are we going to do?’ It was incredibly liberating, and it was terrifying.”
Check out the interview here:
For those less patient fans out there, head over to Digg for a question-by-question breakdown of the interview.
