Apple Music executives are no strangers to public interviews and now, Trent Reznor has sat down with Vulture for a wide-ranging discussion. The conversation jumped between Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails life, his work at Apple Music and Beats, and more. Nine Inch Nails this week released a new EP called ‘Add Violence.’
Update: A YouTube spokesperson responded to us with the following statement: The overwhelming majority of labels and publishers have licensing agreements in place with YouTube to leave fan videos up on the platform and earn revenue from them. Today the revenue from fan uploaded content accounts for roughly 50 percent of the music industry’s YouTube revenue. Any assertion that this content is largely unlicensed is false. To date, we have paid out over $3 billion to the music industry – and that number is growing year on year.
Nine Inch Nails frontman and Apple Music exec Trent Reznor has told Billboard that YouTube is built on stolen content:
Personally, I find YouTube’s business to be very disingenuous. It is built on the backs of free, stolen content and that’s how they got that big. I think any free-tiered service is not fair. It’s making their numbers and getting them a big IPO and it is built on the back of my work and that of my peers. That’s how I feel about it. Strongly.
Reznor made the comments in an interview alongside Apple SVP Eddy Cue, VP Robert Kondrk and ‘no official job title’ Jimmy Iovine in which the three discussed the lessons they have learned through launching the streaming music service …
In a new interview with Billboard, Beats 1 head anchor and “special creative” Zane Lowe has shared some new information and backstory regarding Apple’s (almost) always-on radio station and streaming music service. In the interview, Lowe discusses the motives behind playing the music he plays on his show, as well as some of the behind-the-scenes aspects of being in charge of the entirety of Beats 1.
Speaking to Rolling Stone about creating Beats 1 radio, Trent Reznor said he wanted to recreate the feeling you got when walking into a really good independent record store.
I want that feeling of walking into an independent record shop, if there are still any that exist, like Amoeba [Records], and being delighted by the choices and the way music is presented to you with love and care. It’s exciting. And you leave with stuff you wouldn’t have dreamed you wanted and you’re excited to listen and share it and experience it.
Reznor, who was previously Chief Creative Officer at Beats Music, said that listening to Zane Lowe’s BBC radio show totally inspired him …
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If Apple plans to offer artist exclusives as a way to encourage sign-ups to its rebranded Beats Music streaming service, it will be facing new competition. TechCrunch reports that Tidal, the high-definition music service being relaunched later today by new owner Jay Z, is set to announce some exclusive deals with big-name artists.
Tidal is […] reportedly making a move to snag new releases by some of the biggest musicians of the moment including Kanye West, Madonna and Daft Punk […]
Tidal’s plan of attack will be to ink first-window deals with the artists, where Tidal would get first releases of tracks from big-name artists ahead of any other digital streaming services.
The artists named in the report have all been using the #tidalforall hashtag in recent tweets and Instagram posts …
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Apple’s Spotify-like subscription music service based on its $3 billion Beats acquisition last year is fully underway, The New York Times reports in a new article heavily corroborating our own reporting on the upcoming music service from the past several months. A few interesting details in the report describe two projects being largely led by music industry veterans rather than engineers…
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<em>Trent Reznor with Beats co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Dre Dre</em>
When Apple announced plans to acquire Beats Electronics and Beats Music earlier this year, Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor’s involvement with the streaming music service under Apple’s ownership quickly came in question. A spokesperson for Beats Music said Reznor was still with the company at the time and we reported that Reznor would in fact join Apple despite major staff changes at Beats during the transition. Reznor, who has been credited as Beats Music Chief Creative Officer, has finally opened up about his current role at Apple in an interview with Billboard revealing that he’s “fully in it right now” on an unannounced music project…
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Update: A spokesperson for Beats Music confirmed to us that “Trent Reznor is still with Beats Music.”
Jimmy Iovine has long credited Nine Inch Nails frontman and Beats Music Chief Creative Officer Trent Reznor as a driving force behind the success of the service. Reznor, however, is now rumored to have left the company as it finalizes its $3B sell to Apple. The news comes from a line in a USA Today report over the weekend that curiously doesn’t mention a source of the information:
(Curiously, Beats’ chief creative officer, Trent Reznor, the singer-songwriter and producer of Nine Inch Nails fame responsible for Beats’ tastemaking, has reportedly left the company. Also, one of Beats’ principal technology executives, Fredric Vinna, has recently gone to Spotify, and its co-founder, Ola Sars, to a Spotify-backed venture.)
Beats Music didn’t respond to a request for comment on this story, but Billboard reports that a spokesperson for Beats and for Reznor claim the report is inaccurate:
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Facetiming fans during live gigs seems to be the new thing, though Trent Reznor did have a particularly good excuse during a weekend concert: the fan in question was a terminally ill photojournalist who had planned to attend the concert but was unable to make it, reports kdge.com (via Reddit).
Loudwire added:
Andrew Youssef has been a concert photographer for seven years. The man’s passion for music brought him to photograph countless bands, with Nine Inch Nails being one of Youssef’s personal favorites. Sadly, Youssef was diagnosed with stage-4 colon cancer in 2011. According to Cancer.org, the 5-year observed survival rate for individuals with stage four colorectal cancer can be as low as 6 percent, but in Youssef’s regular ‘Last Shot‘ column for OC Weekly, he documents a refusal to give up his dream despite the odds against him.
After releasing its first single in nearly 5 years with “Came Back Haunted” and returning to play its first North American gig in nearly four years for Lollapalooza, the wait is almost over for the release of Nine Inch Nails’ much anticipated full length album entitled “Hesitation Marks.” For those that can’t wait five days for the album’s official release, Apple today started streaming the album in its entirety for free on iTunes.
The stream is currently working only for users in the US, but we’ve seen that exclusivity window lift after a day or two with free iTunes streams in the past. If you remember, the last big album to stream on iTunes was Daft Punk’s “Random Access Memories.” It too started as a US only stream an eventually became available elsewhere. Here’s to hoping that Apple doesn’t make it as easy to download a full, high-quality version of the album like it did with Daft Punk and other iTunes streams before it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRrQrow-PK0
