At Apple’s WWDC an announcement was made regarding the changes to their Apple Music platform. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has been a key part of this platform since it was called Beats Music, before the Apple acquisition. During this event, he spoke to Billboard Magazine and made some comments about YouTube, Spotify and the value of recorded music that I want to go into. After a reply I made about this got quite popular on /r/music, I decided to share what Trent Reznor has meant to me and why as someone devoted to open-source & decentralized technology it is so bothersome.

The best band logo of all time, taken in Detroit on a flip-phone in 2007

More Than Music

Nine Inch Nails have been my favorite band since I was 9 years old. I’ve seen Trent Reznor live with NIN 12 times, once with How To Destroy Angels and own almost every release on Vinyl and CD (damn Fragile LP has been eluding me for years). I even managed to meet Trent Reznor a few years ago as part of a charity meet & greet before a show.

I met my lifetime hero, Trent Reznor, and of course, the photo came out this blurry :(

Trent has been more than just my favorite artist, he’s been someone I looked up to in terms of the band’s artwork, visual aesthetic, stage production and most importantly his use and understanding of technology. For quite a while and with myself having no awareness of it, his philosophy on technology, music and the music industry were almost parallel to mine.

Reznor has had the most innovative and tech-forward mind in music since the early 1990s. In 1996, he was one of the first mainstream artists to merge his art (music) with gaming by creating the score for one of the most influential games in history, Quake. The Fragility and Lights In The Sky tour production(all managed by Trent) redefined how technology is used in live shows.

The 2008 album Year Zero is a concept-piece that takes place around 2022 and in it the United States Government maintain constant surveillance over all citizens. Listened to today, it feels like a reaction to the Post-Snowden, Post-Wikileaks world that we currently live in. Trent’s love of innovation continued as the album was launched with a huge ARG Campaign, the CD was pressed on a heat sensitive disc that changed colors after being played and an image was included in the music itself, only visible when using a spectrogram.

This image of “The Presence”, symbolising surveillance could only be seen using a spectrogram

In 2008 this album really hit me hard, changing my priorities and what I was interested in. Without this album, I’m not sure I would have become as interested in Open-Source software, decentralization, privacy and bitcoin/Ethereum. It’s one of the few albums that I can actually say “changed my life” and it’s the only album that is so entwined with technology.

Trent vs. The Music Industry

In 2007, Trent publicly went after his label, Interscope Records for overpricing the Year Zero album and releasing multiple singles with minimal new content. His comments were jaw-dropping and received quite a bit of media attention:

“as a reward for being a ‘true fan’ you get ripped off” “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.” “Steal, Steal and Steal Some More”

After this, he released his next album “Ghosts” for free, with options including the ability to pay what you want as well as different physical versions on CD, Vinyl, DVD-Audio and Hi-Def Blu-Ray. At this time, it seemed like there was no one who understood where the music industry was and where it was going to be than Trent.

Using BitTorrent To Leak His Own Stuff

During this time, Trent used his freedom to do some unique things with decentralized technology. In 2006, a torrent containing the full DVD rerelease of Nine Inch Nails 1996 VHS release Closure appeared on a popular tracker (Hint: it rhymes with Hirate Hay). While Trent never publicly stated that he leaked/shared the fully mastered deluxe DVD-set with all the bonus footage, this short message was posted on Trent’s blog:

12/21/2006 : HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

This one is a guilt-free download.

(shhhh - I didn't say that out loud).

If you know what I'm talking about, cool.

The uploader known as seed0 also created torrents for other NIN releases, including a full, uncensored and high quality version of the oft-bootlegged “Broken Movie”. These videos are all currently available to stream on NIN’s Vimeo page, but at the time what Trent did was unprecedented.

Pro-Shot, Fan-Edited Live Blu-Ray/DVD

During their 2008 Lights In The Sky Tour, Trent brought in James Cameron’s 3D team to film four different shows for an eventual HD release. At the last minute the label pulled out of the project, leaving the band with hours of unused raw footage from these shows. Trent decided to upload and seed 405GB of the raw HD footage using BitTorrent, giving the fans the ultimate decision of what to do with it.

It’s fairly well known that Nine Inch Nails has an unusually tech-savvy fanbase, so it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that fans ended up downloading, editing, mixing and releasing the full concert film. The release was called “This One’s On Us” and was available via BitTorrent & YouTube as well as professionally pressed on DVD and Blu-Ray. The pressed versions were sold for a very low price and the project ended up being a massive success that received quite a bit of press attention and praise from the tech community.

Trent Reznor at Apple’s WWDC 2016

The release of This One’s On Us was over 8 years ago and since then Trent has went back to a major label, won an Oscar and is now one of the key members of the Apple Music platform. Here is his full quote on YouTube, Spotify & Tidal that made when promoting the platform’s updates that will ship with iOS10:

“I find YouTube’s business to be very disingenuous. It is built on the backs of free, stolen content and that’s how they got that big. I think any free-tiered service is not fair. It’s making their numbers and getting them a big IPO and it is built on the back of my work and that of my peers. That’s how I feel about it. Strongly,”

Why This Bothers Me? These Are My passions!

Before I worked on awesome open-source blockchain projects, I worked for a record label in Metro-Detroit. The label was affiliated with Eminem and the projects we released were similar. At the time (2004), my suggestions to release mp3s of album for free online, proposals to use BitTorrent as a tool to get new fans (aka customers) and my refusal to spread fake mp3s on file sharing sites helped ensure that my time in the music industry was short-lived. The owners and management of the label/studio were all over 50 and essentially considered my ideas to be blasphemy. This was immensely discouraging then, but as time has passed it’s clear that I learned one of the most valuable things in my life:

Innovation cannot be stopped, trying to stop it is useless and those who utilize it to their benefit earliest will be in the best position to succeed.

My experience in 2004 is why I’m so bothered by Trent’s comments in Billboard. There was one other comment he made that really stuck out to me:

When Jimmy (Iovine) and I first sat down years ago, it was very clear that the future is streaming.

I would imagine a conversation back in 2010 would go down exactly like that, but it leads me to believe that he thinks that the future is still streaming. The product he’s so involved with is not innovative in any way, it’s essentially Spotify with a few tweaks and features. It doesn’t solve the archaic royalty payout system that eats up half of the already low amount paid out by streaming services, it replaces one middleman with another middleman and it is just another app in a crowded market. It’s so crowded and lacking in innovation that the platforms are relying on exclusive releases to differentiate themselves and stand out.

Last year I was lucky enough to have a long talk with legendary audio-engineer and amazing businessman, Steve Albini. We talked for an hour about blockchain tech (he was skeptical) and what would be next for music platforms. It’s a fascinating talk and I highly recommend it, as there is not a single person who gets the business and technology side of the music industry than Steve.

Steve’s points about the music industry being much better now due to technology removing the useless middlemen and allowing artists to directly connect with their fans is spot-on, I’m saying that as someone who used to be one of those useless middlemen. The biggest problem with the current model is that the artists don’t really control their music, they are beholden to Apple, Spotify, Tidal, Napster, etc. for royalty payments and the ubiquity of their platforms.

I guess with Trent being a hero of mine, I always pictured him supporting/working on something that would eliminate middlemen completely, replacing the inefficient, costly and archaic ASCAP royalty payment system backend with something designed for micropayments while giving the artist full control over every aspect of what they release. The recent growth of open source projects and technologies like Ethereum would easily enable a platform like this to be built right now. While it lacks some aspects of what I suggest; Imogen Heap’s Mycelia is the type of thing I think Reznor would support.

I wonder if Trent has heard about Mycelia or if he knows anything about Ethereum?

Imagine how much he could improve and innovate with his expertise, experience and contacts. I guess I spend too much time imagining that, which is why I’m most likely unjust in being disappointed by a hero.

Follow Tony Sakich on Twitter at @TonySwish and visit TonySakich.com