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Nine Inch Nails, Oasis & Jamiroquai (& The Charlatans) to possibly follow free download trend?

While things are not set in stone now, it looks like the free release of music is sealing the coffin on the current incarnation of the record industry.

Following on from his “Steal my shit” speech in Australia last month, Trent Reznor, via the NIN site, released the following statement:

I’ve waited a LONG time to be able to make the following announcement: as of right now Nine Inch Nails is a totally free agent, free of any recording contract with any label. I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate.

Following hot on the heels of that announcement, it appears that Oasis and Jamiroquai may now be following suit. And then the Charlatans announce the same thing.

We think that Gizmodo said it best:

If two of the biggest acts in the industry can see the digital writing on the wall and totally embrace it—that the old way of doing business is broken—why can’t the labels? What Radiohead and NIN are showing is that the business model “of the future” feared by entrenched interests isn’t arriving some time in the horizon. It’s touching down now.

Couple in three new bands to Gizmodo‘s statement, and we can see an avalanche, waiting for just one more snowflake…

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