Nine Inch Nails, commonly abbreviated as NIN (stylized as NIИ), is an American industrial rock band founded in 1988 by Trent Reznor in Cleveland, Ohio. The band released two influential albums during the 1990s—The Downward Spiral (1994) and The Fragile (1999)—and has record sales exceeding 20 million copies worldwide, with 10 million sales certified in the United States alone. Despite its success, the band has had several feuds with the corporate side of the recording industry. The first was its notable conflict with TVT Records regarding the band's first album, Pretty Hate Machine, which led Reznor to record his follow-up