Nine Inch Nails Leave Universal

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mojo-photo-nintrent.jpgAfter Radiohead announced last week it would sell variably-priced digital copies of its new album through the band’s own website, without the help of a record label, many predicted this would be the death knell for the music industry, since any artist with an established following could easily follow this model. Well, apparently another shoe has dropped: as expected, Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor has posted a message on his official website that he has left Universal and is now a “free agent, free of any recording contract with any label.” Reznor has been outspoken in criticizing his label and has even encouraged fans to download the music illegally, so the move comes as no real surprise.

Thom Yorke and Trent Reznor: two idiosyncratic, anti-establishment musicians whose always-tenuous relationships to the music industry have just now reached a logical conclusion, or the leaders of an inevitable and snowballing trend that will turn the entertainment industry upside down? All eyes on inrainbows.com this Wednesday…

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

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