Nine Inch Nails founder Trent Reznor is immensely proud to announce that from now on, the band is a free agent, as posted on their website.

“Hello everyone. I've waited a LONG time to be able to make the following announcement,” begins the singer’s post on Nine Inch Nails’ official website, www.nin.com.

The band’s big news? “As of right now Nine Inch Nails is a totally free agent, free of any recording contract with any label.”

Reznor, 42, explains that “I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different.”

He continues: “It gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate.”

Billboard.com reports that Nine Inch Nails had recorded for Interscope since 1994; prior to that, it was signed to TVT.

In his post, Reznor added that there would be further announcements “in the near future” about plans for 2008. “Exciting times, indeed,” his message ends.

Nine Inch Nails, founded in 1988, has won two Grammy Awards during its career and been nominated several times. It’s most recent nomination came in 2006, for Best Hard Rock Performance – “Every Day Is Exactly the Same.”

The band released “Year Zero,” its sixth studio album, in April 2007. According to Billboard.com, the band has been touring internationally in support of the album.

Reznor has been particularly outspoken recently in regards to file-sharing as a means to obtain Nine Inch Nails’ music, Billboard reports. Upon learning that Australian fans of the band paid as much as U.S. $30, for “Year Zero,” the frontman was quick with advice: “Steal it. Steal away. Give it to your friends.”