If I had more time, I’d respond with a lengthy and airtight argument. Alas, the deadlines beckon. So, for the moment, let me just say that Sasha Frere-Jones is full of shit, that indie rock hasn’t entirely lost its soul, and that Carl Wilson offers a pretty good response echoing many of the problems that I had with Frere-Jones’s tone-deaf attempt at being contrarian. (Latter link discovered via Richard)

The Wet Riffs Gallery (NSFW)

Nine Inch Nails: “Hello everyone. 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. Look for some announcements in the near future regarding 2008. Exciting times, indeed.”

With Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead now operating without record contracts, perhaps the music industry might want to reconsider precisely how it conducts business. The artists and the listeners are not the enemies. The industry’s continued litigation towards online music listeners, the industry’s sustained avarice towards artists locked into unfair contracts, and the industry’s failure to embrace inevitability collectively suggest that we may very well be witnessing a remarkable revolution that may will leave knock the remaining wind out of record companies. These are indeed exciting times. And one can only ponder whether we will see comparable effects in film and television. Is it too idealistic to suggest that the means of production may very well be returning to the workers?