My favorite band in the entire world is Nine Inch Nails. Years ago, they broke up and @andypeters, and I traveled hours to see them for the last time. I was devastated they were over. But luckily, they came back.
Every once in a while over the years, Trent Reznor would make a remark about NIN maybe being over and my reaction was always "NOOO!"
But I've been watching the music landscape change so rapidly over the years. And I hate it. I get saddened when I think about NIN trying to play that game. A version of this band that only releases singles to try to get on top of Spotify playlists and make it big on TikTok would kill me. If Trent Reznor had to update his "IG OMG" every day to please the algorithm, I'd probably literally vomit. Not figuratively. Literally. And because of that, if they were to quietly walk away at this point, I think I'd finally be ok with it. This version of the music world is completely awful, and I don't want them to have to be a part of it if they don't want to be. They've given me so much already.
I know the music industry is an industry, and the marketing business is a business, and maybe I'm just used to what I'm used to. But I can't imagine this is it. It's the worst of the music world and the internet in one.
I too love NIN and am so bummed they have dropped off the musical landscape rencently. I totally get it—there is most definitely more money (and better work/life balance for their schedules) doing movie soundtracks, but I keep hope alive that a new album is on the horizon too. 🙏
I am also one of the streaming music holdouts. Still buy all my music and maintain a large local library. It’s such a shame to see what “unlimited ‘free’ music” has done to the industry…
@exkclamation Unlimited streaming music honestly killed my love for music for years. I still loved music, but I stopped listening to it with a purpose. I still go to tons of live shows, but I never sit down and listen to music any more because of streaming. The past month I've been changing that, and buying full albums again, and it's a night and day difference how much more music I listen to, and how much more I enjoy it.
@gabek YES! 💯💯💯 So glad you haven’t given up on music!
It’s such a double-edged-sword too—that there is SO MUCH great music still being produced, but it takes so much extra time to sift through to find it. However, I truly believe maintaining a personal library ‘collection’ is so important in that pursuit too! It can be so rewarding to delve in deeper, beyond just letting the streaming algorithms take over.
@exkclamation I've set up a system that is working really well for me as far as acquiring and consuming music now. I'd like to write a blog post about it sometime soon, since the convenience of this system is half of what makes this work for me. It has to be nearly as convenient as streaming, or I probably would find myself not going through the effort of acquiring, downloading, importing, etc.
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