Nothing Records was an American record label, specializing in industrial rock and electronic music, founded by Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails) and John Malm, Jr. in 1992. It is considered an example of a vanity label, where an artist is able to run a label, with some degree of independence, from within a larger parent company, Interscope in this case. Nothing Records is now defunct.
The Nothing record label is most famous for its two original signings, Trent Reznor's own band Nine Inch Nails and then-obscure Marilyn Manson. (Nothing released all of Marilyn Manson's records up to Lest We Forget in 2004.) Other artists signed to the label rarely reached the height of support, marketing and name-recognition that both Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson had attained.
Still, the label gained semi-iconic status within the industrial rock scene, and even acquired its own online-fanzine in Sick Among the Pure, although this later became a more general industrial fanzine, and ceased to exist at all in 2005. The Nothing label would often reward its fanbase over the Internet — one form of this outreach was Radio Nothing: an exclusive collection of free MP3 music streams, compiled by Nothing label artists, producers and fans.
In September 2004, coinciding with Trent Reznor leaving New Orleans for the west coast, the Nine Inch Nails website announced "nothing studios: 1994-2004", suggesting that Nothing Studios was no more. This later proved to be the end of the associated record label as well. Speculation among listeners that the label could continue ceased when Trent Reznor successfully sued co-founder John Malm, Jr. for fraud and breach of fiduciary duty (amongst others), ensuring that the Nothing era was over.
Tag descriptions on Last.fm are editable by everyone. Feel free to contribute!
All user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.