Are you going to watch "The Social Network" when it comes out? Let us know.

On his site, Reznor talks about how David Fincher, the director of the film, asked him to do the score, his initial reluctance, and his satisfaction with the semi-finished product…

“David Fincher started inquiring about my interest in scoring his upcoming film, The Social Network. Yeah, the movie about the founding of Facebook. I’ve always loved David’s work but quite honestly I wondered what would draw him to tell that story. When I actually read the script and realized what he was up to, I said goodbye to that free time I had planned.

Months later, I’m happy to tell you we’re nearing the completion of this and I couldn’t be happier with how it’s turned out. The level of excellence that David operates on is inspiring and the entire process has been challenging and truly enjoyable."

So what does Reznor think about the film? ”it’s really fucking good. And dark!”

Do you think Trent Reznor was a good choice to score the film? Tell us what you think.

You can check out the teaser trailer for the film below…

I say it’s a great interview, and it is — but Trent also says something that I think is pretty dumb: he says that he’s in favour of an Internet tax, in which everyone would pay their service provider $5 extra and that money would then be distributed to artists to compensate them for downloading. He’s not the only one who thinks this would be a good way to solve the problem, either; the Songwriters Association of Canada recently came out in favour of the exact same thing: i.e, a tax on ISPs.

This idea is appealing primarily because it seems so simple. In reality, however, it would be horrendously complicated to administer, on top of being wrong. Why is it wrong? Because imposing a tax on a broad range of people for the behaviour of a small percentage isn’t just unfair, it’s bad policy and in most cases doesn’t work (and please don’t compare this to the taxes I pay to provide medical care to smokers or whatever; that’s life and death, and this isn’t).

Why should everyone who uses the Internet — even those who just use it to get their email once a week, or to send a web link to their bridge club, or better yet to legally download songs from iTunes — have to pay a fee to compensate artists for the fact that less than 10 per cent of Internet users commit copyright infringement on a semi-regular basis? It makes no sense at all, despite how appealing it seems at first glance.

I sympathize with Trent, and with other artists who are struggling to find a way to adapt as traditional business models fall apart around them, but coming up with new taxes is the wrong solution.

Comments

The rocking virtual house on the Internet looks like a House of Blues to the major labels that have squeezed fans and artists for decades. Shed no tears for an industry that thought $18.99 and up was a brilliant price to charge for CDs.

Artists who are free from their contractual obligations to major labels can choose to experiment with how they want to distribute their music. Prince put a couple of million free CDs in a British newspaper, and sold out concert after concert in London.

The move by Radiohead to offer In Rainbows at a name your price rate has been followed by Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor hinting at distributing his music in a non-music label kind of way.

That crack in the music label’s wall of control shows signs of spreading. The Telegraph named Oasis and Jamiroquai as a couple of bands ready to emulate Radiohead’s example.

The story also cited Alan McGee, manager of The Charlatans, in suggesting that his band and acts like famed Manchester scenesters Happy Mondays may be positioned to follow the Radiohead example.

“How do you get them profile?” he asked, regarding these bands that were once big but simply do not get the exposure of other acts. “You give away the record.”

Oasis has been very big, definitely in the conversation when talking about Radiohead or NIN, and their next single will be a download-only track. They can offer an iTunes-like price, but instead of watching a label chow down on 70 percent of the sale, or more, Oasis keeps the money, less expenses.

We would be thrilled to see vociferous Napster critics, Metallica, follow this example. It would be a nice way to apologize for ‘Load’ and ‘Reload’.

To promote new album “Year Zero,” Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor is using a multimedia scavenger hunt that leads fans to online destinations, reports CNN. The campaign will encompass everything from cryptic phrases on T-shirts to Orwellian Web sites to MP3s found on USB drives in bathrooms at NIN concerts.

A source with knowledge of the project says Reznor perceives it all not as a marketing campaign but as “a new entertainment form.” 42 Entertainment is helping to create the experience; that’s the agency behind 2005’s “alternate-reality game” promoting the Halo 2 videogame for the XBox.

Via

iamtryingtobelieve.com

Related: Five Trends Driving Big Games

Comments