While perhaps best known as the founder and sole member of the groundbreaking industrial music project Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor is a multi-talented creative force whose drive and passion has extended to film, videogames, and digital music services.
Reznor¹s musical roots stem from his childhood in Western Pennsylvania, first taking up the piano at age 5 and quickly adding instruments like tenor sax, tuba, and guitar to his range. After a year studying music and computers at Allegheny College, he dropped out and moved to Cleveland for a job a recording studio as an assistant engineer/janitor, where he began recording his own music during unused studio time.
In 1988, Reznor formed Nine Inch Nails, using much of that early studio work as the foundation of his debut album, 1989¹s Pretty Hate Machine, for which he played all the instruments himself. Shortly after, he signed with Interscope Records and released the Broken EP in 1992, which earned NIN's first Grammy Award for Best Heavy Metal Performance. In 1994, NIN released the breakthrough album The Downward Spiral, which debuted No. 2 on the Billboard 200 on the strength of such radio hits as "Closer" and "Hurt." The next two albums, The Fragile, and With Teeth, both reached No. 1 on the chart.
Since then, Reznor and NIN released another 10 albums and EPs. Overall, he¹s garnered two GRAMMY awards from 13 nominations, appeared on Time magazine's most influential people list in 1997, and was named "the most vital artist in music" by Spin magazine. In addition to his continued work in Nine Inch Nails, Reznor has recorded music as a member of the group How To Destroy Angels.
Over the years, NIN developed a reputation as one of the best live acts in rock. From the inaugural Lollapalooza tour in 1991, to the legendary mud-covered appearance at Woodstock 1994, to the acclaimed Tension 2013 Tour, Reznor has entertained millions with his energy, talent, and eye for spectacle. This same desire to express his music through new formats has also resulted in some of the most creative music videos ever produced. The controversial music video for "Closer" (directed by Mark Romanek) is considered among the best music videos of all time, winning numerous awards and is one of the few music videos included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Throughout his career, Reznor has experimented with different expressions of music, leading to producing and composing scores for both videogames and film. His videogame credits include the scores for Quake and Call of Duty: Black Ops II. His film score production credits include Natural Born Killers (Oliver Stone, 1994) and Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1997). In 2010, Reznor composed his first film score for David Fincher¹s The Social Network which won an Academy Award® for best score and a Golden Globe for best original score. Additionally, he received a Critics' Choice Movie Award and a Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for best score. The following year Reznor scored his second film, Fincher's English adaptation of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, earning a second Golden Globe nomination for best original score.
The peak of Reznor's career came at a time of great disruption for the music industry, with the Internet changing the way music was sold, discovered, and acquired. From the beginning of this transition, Reznor began experimenting with new forms of music distribution and promotion, and few artists have embraced and adapted to this new environment the way he has.
Reznor broke new ground by posting the source tracks for "The Hand That Feeds" as a free download for fans to edit/remix/sample as they pleased, and created an online community for fans to share their work. He released the album The Slip as a free digital download, which in less than a year exceeded 1.8 million downloads. And in support of the 2007's concept album Year Zero, Reznor developed a groundbreaking alternate reality game (with42 Entertainment) that spanned no less than 29 websites, hidden messages within NIN merchandise, recordings and barcodes, hotlines, flier and poster campaigns, and even resistance cell "meetings" organized via calls made to pre-paid cell phones distributed to participants. Within two months, the ARG amassed 2.5 million cumulative site visits, 7.5 million cumulative page views, and 2 million phone calls.
He was an early adopter and supporter of the direct-to-fan artist services platform Topspin, and has been one of the most vocal advocates of artists taking control of their careers using the online and digital tools at their disposal.
Reznor has taken on the role of product visionary and artist advocate behind the Beats Music service, where he serves as Chief Creative Officer. Working alongside founder Jimmy Iovine and CEO Ian Rogers, Reznor¹s vision of a music service that could deliver contextually relevant playlists made by real music experts has become a reality. And he leads the charge to ensure artists will see value in Beats Music by not only paying them fairly, but also by providing ways to both communicate with fans and analyze data through the service.
20th Century Fox
