For Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor, social networking is not working.
Which might seem strange to hear from a man who was presented this week with a special achievement award at the Webbys.
Still, in a blog post written Wednesday, Reznor seems to have come to an emotional fork in the road with Web 2.0. And he's decided to stick the fork in it.
"I will be tuning out of the social networking sites because at the end of the day it's now doing more harm than good in the bigger picture and the experiment seems to have yielded a result. Idiots rule," he said.
Reznor is very forthright about the kind of idiots he has in mind. For him, they have ruined the beauty of eschewing record companies in favor of direct contact with real people out there.
His first example of idiocracy are posts to the Nine Inch Nails site: "On nin.com, there's 3-4 different people that each send me between 50 - 100 message per day of delusional, often threatening nonsense. We can delete them, but they just sign back up and start again."
Reznor's experience on Twitter sounds, if anything, even more disturbing: "Looks like the Metal Sludge contingency has discover Twitter! Finally! For those of you that don't know what this is, please let me explain. Metal Sludge is the home of the absolutely worst people I've ever come across. It's populated mainly by unattractive plump females who publicly fantasize about having sex with guys in bands."
It transpires that many of these alleged "worst people" are folks that Reznor recognizes from his shows.
"I really don't understand what kind of 'fan' spends that kind of time and money to travel across the country seeing a band, to then dedicate an incredible amount of time and energy into non-stop hate diatribes online," he said.
Humanity is not a pretty thing, Trent. Some of your music paints that at a very high level of decibel and clarity. Still, Reznor considered starting up a public forum where everyone's identity could be verified.
However, in the end, he appears to have given up on the whole social-networking thing. And he blames the lunge for lucre: "We're in a world where the mainstream social networks want any and all people to boost user numbers for the big selloff and are not concerned with the quality of experience."
Some might feel that Reznor is merely a fine expert in attracting attention.
However, when someone who has embraced modern technology with both skill and openness (his fight against the Apple Apps store approval process, for example, was extremely well-argued) turns against one of its supposedly most vital pillars, it is worth listening.
Because he just might have a point. In fact, I can't help but look at Nine Inch Nails discography and see a vivid picture of what might be the life story of social networking: "Pretty Hate Machine." "Broken." "The Downward Spiral." "The Fragile." "With Teeth." "Year Zero," "Ghosts." And, yes, that's in chronological order.
The Downward Spiral, the Nine Inch Nails album that caused Trent Reznor's big rant against Apple.
Well, Apple has finally approved an update to the official iPhone app for industrial-rock band Nine Inch Nails, after previously rejecting it due to objectionable content pertaining to the band's 1994 album "The Downward Spiral." No changes were made from the rejected version
Maybe Apple relented just to shut up NIN frontman Trent Reznor, whose bloggy rant against Apple was pretty much the equivalent of trashing Steve Jobs' hotel room. Not only did he tell Apple to "think your policies through and for f***'s sake get your app approval scenario together," good heavens, he compared Apple to Wal-Mart!
But he had a point. Apple's commitment to standards of decency in the App Store has been schizophrenic at best: it yanked the otherwise harmless "I Am Rich," a moderately hilarious ploy at making well-moneyed doofuses cough up $1,000, but approved the disturbing "Baby Shaker" until a flurry of press saw it taken down. Don't even get me started on fart apps.
But fans of Reznor rage needn't worry. The rocker has plenty of other beefs with the evolving digital music industry, particularly when it comes to experimental online retail. And he's got that five-word Webby Awards speech to look forward to. Let's hope he chooses his words well.
There are literally dozens of categories in the annual Webby Awards--too many, if you ask some--covering pretty much every niche of digital media. This year's winners, announced Tuesday, are quite a lot to scroll through.
The list of top honors, however, is short.
This year, the Webby Awards' Person of the Year is former "Saturday Night Life" cast member Jimmy Fallon, whose new "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" has brought Twittering and gadget fandom to the network-TV crowd.
The film-specific Person of the Year award goes to "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane, who has partnered with Google on an animated Web series and whose creations consistently rank at the top of Hulu's most-watched clips.
The Artist of the Year accolade is for Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor. A vocal critic of the mainstream music industry, Reznor has been skeptical of "innovative" digital distribution efforts and most recently lashed out at Apple on his blog for turning down a Nine Inch Nails iPhone app.
A new category, Breakout of the Year, joins the Webbys this year. It's been awarded to--surprise, surprise--Twitter.
The fact that the Webbys' top awards go to known entities isn't new. Its highest honors tend to go to mainstream celebrities who have built their fame offline and have then turned to the Web as a sort of experimental platform. Last year's Person of the Year awards, for example, went to comedian Stephen Colbert, director Michel Gondry, and Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am for his YouTube sensation "Yes We Can" in support of Barack Obama's presidential campaign.
The Webbys ceremony is set for June 8 as part of Internet Week New York.
Sure, rocker Trent Reznor's example has encouraged plenty of music acts to reject the label system and search for a new industry paradigm using the Web.
Lars Ulrich suggests that Metallica may want to dump its label, and he wants Trent Reznor's help to do it.
(Credit: The Los Angeles Times)But did anyone expect that among Reznor's disciples would be Lars Ulrich?
Ulrich, a member of the rock band Metallica and once one of the leading critics of peer-to-peer sites, said during an interview last week with The Los Angeles Times that Metallica no longer needs the backing of a big record company and suggested that the group may be ready to go independent.
"The primary--not the only, but the primary--function of a record label is to act as a bank," Ulrich told the Times. "When you're fortunate enough to be successful and so on, you don't need to rely on record companies as the banks...We're doing a bunch of shows with Trent this summer in Europe. I look forward to sitting down and talking to him about what's on his radar."
Because of Reznor and efforts by Radiohead, which also dropped its label and has since used the Internet to market itself directly to fans, Ulrich told the Times "there's nothing but possibilities."
What's the significance here? To many music fans Ulrich became the hated symbol of anti-innovation, anti-technology, and heavy-handed copyright owners when he was among those who tried to sue Napster--and indeed file sharing--out of existence.
Now, a decade later, even he wants to sit at the feet of Reznor.
Reznor, leader of the band Nine Inch Nails, has won accolades from digital-music fans for attempting to make music more affordable for the public while helping artists earn a living. He's done this by rejecting the major-label system and distributing music via the Web directly to the public.
Ulrich's nod to Reznor is, at the very least, an acknowledgment that digital distribution is here to stay and that the best way to survive as a music act is to understand it.
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