Trent Reznor Sez Radiohead Didn’t Really <i>Mean It</i> (At Least Enough To Satisfy Him)

Not content to sit back and mentally count the windfall from the first-week sales of his self-released opus Ghosts I-IV, Trent Reznor now has some words for Thom, Johnny, the bald one I always identified with, and the other two; since Trent’s venture into online retail was so successful and offered higher-quality audio downloads (as well as CDs and various special editions), he feels Radiohead may have rushed the downloadable In Rainbows to market in order to look cool for all us media types, rather than because they were honestly trying to push the Web-age sales model forward.

“I think the way [Radiohead] parlayed it into a marketing gimmick has certainly been shrewd,” Reznor said when speaking to Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Michael Atkin. “But if you look at what they did, though, it was very much a bait and switch to get you to pay for a MySpace-quality stream as a way to promote a very traditional record sale…”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Reznor continued, “but I don’t see that as a big revolution [that] they’re kinda getting credit for.” In addition to the quality of Radiohead’s MP3s, NIN’s frontman also took issue with the band’s omission of artwork and altogether not taking care of the fans. “To me that feels insincere. It relies upon the fact that it was quote-unquote ‘first,’ and it takes the headlines with it.”

I thought there might have also been the intention to, you know, release a great album driving Radiohead’s decision, but maybe I’m just being nostalgic for listening to records rather than artists yapping to any media outlet that will have them about their own biz-related ingenuity in the face of a dying monolithic blah blah blah. (I know, I know…I’m not allowed to say anything mean about Trent. Sorry. I really do like Pretty Hate Machine a lot!)

Reznor: Radiohead Offering Was Insincere, Industry Is Inept [Ars Technica]