I posted several posts related to this new music business model issues. It’s all related to Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead; here, here and here. The saga continues as this was posted at NIN site 3 days ago by Trent Reznor himself:
Hello everyone. I’ve waited a LONG time to be able to make the following announcement: as of right now Nine Inch Nails is a totally free agent, free of any recording contract with any label. I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate. Look for some announcements in the near future regarding 2008. Exciting times, indeed.
So 2 of mega rock acts are starting to do this, there’s also discoveries of other mega rock acts are already ‘discover’ this new music model reported at NewMusicStrategies.
Then this is the conclusion from Gizmodo:
If two of the biggest acts in the industry can see the digital writing on the wall and totally embrace it—that the old way of doing business is broken—why can’t the labels? What Radiohead and NIN are showing is that the business model “of the future” feared by entrenched interests isn’t arriving some time in the horizon. It’s touching down now.
In my very personal opinion, i think Major Labels suck and musicians are always the victim. I have experienced both, as an unsigned and a major label signed band. As long as i can remember, independent musicians all around the world (including my band for 1,5 decade) are already doing this business model for years if not decades. The different was, there were no fast internet connection (damn!).
So if mega rock acts who actually gained big revenues through their ‘old business model’ are now change into ‘direct to customer’ model, then try to figure out what’s next.