Ministry’s Al Jourgensen revealed in a new Consequence of Sound interview that Nine Inch Nails are paid somewhere around $400,000 per show. He brought up NIN’s paycheck when asked about holding a potential industrial music festival.
“You know what’s funny, I had actually meetings with a major promoter about that very thing. You know what they told me: ‘There’s no market for it. Nobody’d want to see that.’ The entire budget for the festival would be $100,000. And that includes renting the space, the crews, the bands, everything. It may sound like a lot of money to you but trust me, in this day and age, $100,000 is about one-quarter of what Nine Inch Nails gets paid for one show on their own.
So, they absolutely think there’s no market, and that people don’t like this music, and there’s no use for it. They want to promote rap and pop music, and that’s all there is to it. Don’t hold your breath. That’s what I’m saying. The corporate powers that be don’t think that’s a good idea, for whatever reason. But, just like they say write your congressman, write your promoter, and say, you know what, that’s bullshit, dude. There’s a lot of people who would love to see the exact concert that you just mentioned.”
He said his relationship with Trent Reznor is great, and he had high praise for Nine Inch Nails.
Trent is a very talented artist and has impeccable taste in the people who he’s been influenced by. You could see a lot of David Bowie. And he toured with Bowie with Nine Inch Nails. You could see his influence from us, you could see his influence from a lot of different industrial bands, and that’s great, because what he does is that he takes things that he hears and he puts his own stamp on it, and makes it Nine Inch Nails and that’s basically the criterion for being a good artist.”
