Nine Inch Nails' Criticism of the Music Industry

Trent Reznor's criticism of the music industry is well-known. Over their more than 20-year career, Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails have clashed with virtually all of the band's record labels.

Trent Reznor has always embraced his image as an artist and a rebel, so his inability to conform to corporate requests regarding his music comes as no surprise. Nine Inch Nails' first major head-to-head battle with "the man" happened in the early 1990s with their first label, TVT Records. That dispute was amicably resolved by giving Reznor his own Interscope Records offshoot, called Nothing Records. Nearly ten years later, in 2005, Reznor would also find fault with Nothing Records, resulting in a lawsuit against its co-founder and longtime NIN manager John Malm.

Two years after his legal battle with John Malm, Reznor took his dissatisfaction with Universal Music Group (owner of Interscope Records, and by extension of Reznor's Nothing Records) all the way to the top. Reznor was not only angry about the corporation's efforts to interfere with how he created and presented his own music, but also with how they priced and distributed all the NIN albums. As a result, when Nine Inch Nails fulfilled all the requirements of their contract with Interscope in 2007, Reznor announced that they were leaving the label and that NIN would operate as a free agent.

Nine Inch Nails has repeatedly shown its disdain for the capitalistic music industry. The band has even gone so far as to offer its last two albums, in their entirety, for free download.