This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Brands & Merch
Trent Reznor announces Beats alliance
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 17 October 2012
Trent Reznor has announced that he is working on a new project in conjunction with headphones company Beats By Dre. Exactly what the project will involve is yet to be announced, but it seems to be a recording endeavour of some sort.
Reznor tweeted on Monday: “In the studio for a day of experimentation with a hero of mine”, adding later that it wasn’t David Byrne, despite the pair having been interviewed together on stage at the Library Foundation Of Los Angeles on Sunday: “David Byrne = hero of mine, but it’s not him. I doubt you’ll guess this one!”
Then yesterday on Facebook, the Nine Inch Nails frontman wrote: “Some of you may have read that I have begun working with Beats By Dre. For the past year I have indeed been involved with Dre, Jimmy Iovine, Luke Wood, and the rest of the team on a number of very interesting projects that will start to emerge next year. I have been wanting to experiment and focus my energy and creativity in some different directions, and Beats has afforded me that very opportunity”.
He continued: “The process has been challenging and fascinating and as much as I’d like to tell you about the things we’ve dreamed up… I just can’t. Not yet… I can tell you it’s probably not what you’re expecting!”
It’s the second surprising deal for Reznor in recent weeks, given Iovine runs Reznor’s former label Universal/Interscope, of which the NIN man has said quite a few critical words in the past. As previously reported, he also announced last month that, after a number of years of fierce independence, his new band How To Destroy Angels would release their debut album through Sony/Columbia.
Speaking at that LFLA event at the weekend, Reznor explained that the seeds of the decision to return to the major label system dated back to Nine Inch Nails’ final tour in 2009. He explained: “We’re playing that night in Prague, but I see flyers up for Radiohead, who’s playing the same place we’re playing, six months from then. Then I walk into the record shop, and there isn’t a section that says Nine Inch Nails. [Going back to a major] was to have a team of people who are better at that [marketing] than I am, worldwide … that felt like it was worth slicing the pie up monetarily. So far it’s been pleasantly pleasant”.
