There’s just something about that pesky Radiohead pay-what-you-want scheme that gets under Trent Reznor’s skin. I think it’s the fact that he basically tried it with Saul Williams’ The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!, and it failed to work for a lesser-known artist. Either way, he dissed the Radiohead model once, then posted a rant about it on his site, and now it’s come up in yet another interview.
“At the end of the day, when you saw what [Radiohead] did in terms of them signing with a record label and selling a record, it felt like a step backward, and it felt like it was just more of a stunt than any kind of real formula for people to survive in the same era,” Reznor told the A.V. Club.
“The thing that I learned from Radiohead is, I don’t want to ask you what you think it’s worth. ‘Hey, I just worked a year on this thing.’ ‘Well, that’s worth 10 cents.’ ‘Hey, fuck you!’”