"What technology has done to disrupt the music business in terms of not only how people listen to music but the value they place on it is defeating." Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor offers damning critique of the state of music in 2024

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Trent Reznor excited Nine Inch Nails fans last month with the news that he and his long-time collaborator and bandmate Atticus Ross are “ready to be back in the driver’s seat” with a new NIN project, in addition to working on the score for TRON: Ares, the third instalment of the sci-fi film series, set for release in October 2025.

However in a new interview with IndieWire, talking about his much-acclaimed soundtrackwork, Reznor admits to feeling “disillusionment with the current state of music.

“What we’re looking for [from film] is the collaborative experience with interesting people,” he says. “We haven’t gotten that from the music world necessarily, for our own choice.”

Speaking to writer Ryan Lattanzio, Reznor continues: “You mentioned disillusionment with the music world? Yes. The culture of the music world sucks. That’s another conversation, but what technology has done to disrupt the music business in terms of not only how people listen to music but the value they place on it is defeating.

“I’m not saying that as an old man yelling at clouds, but as a music lover who grew up where music was the main thing. Music [now] feels largely relegated to something that happens in the background or while you’re doing something else. That’s a long, bitter story.”

Last month, Reznor told The Hollywood Reporter that scoring films and TV shows has provided him an outlet “to feel vital, to feel challenged”, and that working with director David Fincher on The Social Network taught him and Ross important lessons.

“We could still be us,” he said, “and we could still apply the same things we would do writing a song, just shifting around how we look at it - where the script and the vision of the director and the scene and setting are the lyrics, and we could take our arrangement skills and the same things that we tap into emotionally in Nine Inch Nails into another setting. But it took a minute for us to understand that, a few months of waking up at 4 in the morning and sweating about, What did we get ourselves into?”

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.