Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) announced earlier this week that he has fulfilled his contract with Universal, and is now leaving the world of major labels forever. A couple quotes from him on the subject:
"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 this one from a few months earlier, speculating more on what he'll do now : "I would put out my next album, you could download it from my site at as high a bit-rate as you want, pay $4 through PayPal. Come see the show and buy a T-shirt if you like it. I would put out a nicely packaged merchandise piece, if you want to own a physical thing. And it would come out the day that it's done in the studio, not this "Let's wait three months" bulls---."
Great stuff as far as I'm concerned. Let's hope other artists follow his march away from Universal.