Music Ally

One of the big criticisms of successful new digital models like those tested by Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails is this: they’re Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, with millions of fans. What about unknown artists?

It’s a valid point, and one that NIN’s Trent Reznor has just addressed head on in a post on his forum. His advice: Make music cheaply and give it away, build an email database, and then work with someone like TopSpin to sell premium packages. And build a community:

“Constantly update your site with content – pictures, blogs, whatever. Give people a reason to return to your site all the time. Put up a bulletin board and start a community. Engage your fans (with caution!) Make cheap videos. Film yourself talking. Play shows. Make interesting things. Get a Twitter account. Be interesting. Be real. Submit your music to blogs that may be interested. NEVER CHASE TRENDS.”

The full thing is well worth a read.

Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor is rightly hailed as one of the most forward-thinking artists when it comes to digital marketing and social networking, so news that he’s (kinda) quit Twitter is saddening. His Twitter feed is now one-way – just announcements, no replies.

In a long post on his forum, he explains that it’s because of spammers and haters. “I will be tuning out of the social networking sites because at the end of the day it’s now doing more harm than good in the bigger picture and the experiment seems to have yielded a result. Idiots rule.”

Specifically, it seems Reznor and his other half have been suffering abuse on Twitter, which he suggests has been caused by the fact that he’s “not the same person I was in 1994″. And he has a theory on this, too:

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Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor has blasted Apple for what he describes as an inconsistent approach to obscene content. Apple rejected an updatedversion of the Nine Inch Nails iPhone app, possibly on the basis that it provided access to “The Downward Spiral”, a song with explicit lyrics. Reznor griped on Twitter that the very same song is available on the iTunes store, saying: “Thanks Apple for the clear description of the problem – as in, what do you want us to change to get past your stupid f***ing standards?” At the moment, although the iTunes store has a parental guidance function allowing parents to prevent their kids from downloading songs with naughty lyrics, there is no equivalent feature for iPhone apps. For the time being Reznor’’s development team has removed the link to the offending track.

Yep, him again. Trent Reznor is launching a new iPhone app called Nearby, which lets fans post messages and photos tagged with their location, while having conversations with nearby fans (for example at gigs). It’ll also tie into the Nine Inch Nails website, with these photos and messages accessible through a Google Earth interface.

The news comes in a Wired interview which digs into some of NIN’s other innovative marketing stuff, working with Californian company Sudjam. It also reveals that more than 11,000 fans have so far remixed NIN songs and uploaded them to the band’s website, and that the NIN fan database is now two-million strong.

“As an artist, you are now the marketer,” says Reznor. A fascinating read.

Hats (or hi-hats) off to Lars Ulrich out of Metallica – despite being surrounded by reps from his label WMG at a recent press event, he was happy to talk about the band’s plans to possibly go it alone now its deal with the label has expired.

“Let’s cut to the chase: The primary – not the only, but the primary – function of a record label is to act as a bank. When you’re fortunate enough to be successful and so on, you don’t need to rely on record companies as the banks… We’re doing a bunch of shows with Trent [Reznor - of Nine Inch Nails] this summer in Europe. I look forward to sitting down and talking to him about what’s on his radar.”

Reznor, of course, has been trying tactics like giving away his album on BitTorrent – and even setting up his own torrent tracker. We suspect Metallica would draw the line at this, but whatever you think of the band’s previous attitudes towards file-sharing, taking tips from NIN on how to evolve in the digital era is a positive move.

Well, unless you’re WMG of course. Meanwhile, Ulrich is also excited about the Guitar Hero: Metallica game that’s coming out. “I really believe that if we sit here five years from now or ten years… it’ll be a fairly standard way of releasing music.”

In a post on his website’s forum, Nine Inch Nails mainman Trent Reznor has addressed (at length) the issue of secondary ticketing, accusing Live Nation and Ticketmaster of intentionally supporting and fuelling the secondary market – a theme that’s been explored elsewhere in the last couple of weeks.

NIN is taking its own steps to stop the scalping:

“NIN gets 10% of the available seats for our own pre-sale. We won a tough (and I mean TOUGH) battle to get the best seats. We require you to sign up at our site (for free) to get tickets. We limit the amount you can buy, we print your name on the tickets and we have our own person let you in a separate entrance where we check your ID to match the ticket,” he writes.

“We have essentially stopped scalping by doing these things – because we want true fans to be able to get great seats and not get ripped off by these parasites.”

It’s intriguing that with all the industry talk about getting artists closer to fans, the issue around artists’ and labels’ involvement in secondary ticketing is blowing up. Reznor’s comments strongly paint the former as hypocritical if you’re also doing the latter.

Next up at MidemNet is a presentation from Mike Masnick from Techdirt and Floor 64, talking about what Trent Reznor / Nine Inch Nails did last year, in terms of putting together a new business model for music.

It all starts with CwF – connecting with fans, and then RtB – reason to buy. “What’s amazing is how difficult it has been for others to combine these two elements in a way that allows them to make money,” says Masnick.

It started when he was signed to a major, even, in 2007 with the album Year Zero’s alternative reality game / internet scavenger hunt. “It made the fans more energised and engaged and excited, but it upset Reznor’s own record label,” says Masnick, referring to Reznor’s habit of dropping USB keys in venue toilets with new music on, during the tour around Year Zero.

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