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==Criticism==
===Universal Music Group & Year Zero Pricing===
On May 13, 2007 Reznor made a post on his blog on the official Nine Inch Nails website condemning Universal Music Group for their pricing and distribution plans for ''[[Year Zero]]''. The full text of that post is as follows:
<blockquote>"As the climate grows more and more desperate for record labels, their answer to their mostly self-inflicted wounds seems to be to screw the consumer over even more. A couple of examples that quickly come to mind:
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* The ABSURD retail pricing of ''Year Zero '' in Australia. Shame on you, UMG. ''Year Zero '' is selling for $34.99 Australian dollars ($29.10 US). No wonder people steal music. Avril Lavigne's record in the same store was $21.99 ($18.21 US). By the way, when I asked a label rep about this his response was: "'It's because we know you have a real core audience that will pay whatever it costs when you put something out - you know, true fans. It's the pop stuff we have to discount to get people to buy." ' So... I guess as a reward for being a "'true fan" ' you get ripped off.''
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* The dreaded EURO Maxi-single. Nothing but a consumer rip-off that I've been talked into my whole career. No more.''
On October 8, 2007, Reznor announced that he was a free agent through a posting at both [[nin.com]] and [[The Spiral]]:
<blockquote>"Hello everyone. I've waited a LONG time to be able to make the following announcement: as of right now Nine Inch Nails is atotally 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. Look for some announcements in the near future regarding 2008. Exciting times, indeed."</blockquote>
===Remixing===
In a posting on nin.com on 11/20/2007, Reznor explained that the launch of [[remix.nin.com]] that was supposed to accompany the release of ''[[Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D]]'' and all ''[[Year Zero]]'' [[multitracks]] had been delayed due to a legal hitch caused by Universal:
<blockquote>"My former record company and current owner of all these master files, Universal, is currently involved in a lawsuit with other media titans Google (YouTube) and News Corp (MySpace). Universal is contending that these sites do not have what is referred to as “safe harbor” under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and therefore are in copyright violation because users have uploaded music and video content that is owned by Universal. Universal feels that if they host our remix site, they will be opening themselves up to the accusation that they are sponsoring the same technical violation of copyright they are suing these companies for. Their premise is that if any fan decides to remix one of my masters with material Universal doesn’t own – a “mash-up”, a sample, whatever – and upload it to the site, there is no safe harbor under the DMCA (according to Universal) and they will be doing exactly what MySpace and YouTube are doing. This behavior may get hauled out in court and impact their lawsuit. Because of this they no longer will host our remix site, and are insisting that Nine Inch Nails host it. In exchange for this they will continue to let me upload my Universal masters and make them available to fans, BUT shift the liability of hosting them to me. Part of the arrangement is having user licenses that the fans sign (not unlike those on MySpace or You Tube) saying they will not use unauthorized materials. If they WERE to do such a thing, everybody sues everybody and the world abruptly ends.
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While I am profoundly perturbed with this stance as content owners continue to stifle all innovation in the face of the digital revolution, it is consistent with what they have done in the past. So… we are challenged at the last second to find a way of bringing this idea to life without getting splashed by the urine as these media companies piss all over each other?'s feet. We have a cool and innovative site ready to launch but we’re currently scratching our heads as to how to proceed.
More to come?"</blockquote>