Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor has long had a love-hate relationship with Twitter, with his account often going dormant for months on end. Not so today, with Reznor initially posting a message inviting fans to use his few Spotify invites, then tearing into his old record label, Interscope/Universal, for their recent reissue of Nine Inch Nails' debut album, Pretty Hate Machine.
"NIN fans, don't waste your money on this version of [Pretty Hate Machine] that was just released," he wrote. His next post added, "A record label bullshit move repackaging the old version. Ignore please."
Nine Inch Nails released a remastered version of Pretty Hate Machine this past fall featuring new artwork from long-time NIN art director Rob Sheridan.
Reznor has been a particularly vocal critic of the record industry, including how his own labels have handled his music. After seeing the prices of his albums in Australia, Reznor told his Australian fans to "steal" the music during a live concert. It's also widely believed that the leak of Nine Inch Nails' last studio album for a major label, Year Zero, was perpetrated by Reznor himself.
Nine Inch Nails have since successfully released two albums, Ghosts I-IV and The Slip (which was offered as a free download, and only later saw a physical release), without any record label help.
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Josh Hart is a former web producer and staff writer for Guitar World and Guitar Aficionado magazines (2010–2012). He has since pursued writing fiction under various pseudonyms while exploring the technical underpinnings of journalism, now serving as a senior software engineer for The Seattle Times.
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