Gary Numan makes a surprise appearance on stage with Nine Inch Nails for a performance of his song Metal, live in London, UK, July 15th, 2009.

This performance continues with Gary Numan’s Cars.

Filmed by Rob Sheridan with the Canon 5D Mark II. Audio mix by Blumpy.

via ninofficial

Gary Numan makes a surprise appearance on stage with Nine Inch Nails for a performance of his classic song Cars, live in London, UK, July 15th, 2009.

This is the official version of the video, in HD, filmed by Rob Sheridan with the Canon 5D Mark II. Audio mix by Blumpy.

Trent Reznor has emerged from his retirement and post marital bliss to do a little work for JJ Abrams’ Fringe, pro bono.

But he better enjoy the fun before his head explodes.

According to Entertainment Weekly:

Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor has teamed up with Fringe for a new promo spot.

The spot, which debuts Thursday during Game 5 of the American League Championship Series, features a reworking of the Nine Inch Nails song Zero-Sum by Reznor, who recites lines of dialogue from Fringe’s William Bell (Leonard Nimoy) over the music. So, how did the freaky drama series secure the services of Reznor? After Fox’s marketing department showed the Fringe producers a version of the promo that used “Zero-Sum,” series exec producer Jeff Pinkner simply asked a nearby Reznor acquaintance—that’d be co-creator J.J. Abrams—if the NIN musician might be interested in a collaboration. One email later, Reznor was on the case. “We offered him compensation, and he said, ‘No, no, I just want to have fun and be part of something cool,’” says Pinkner, adding: “How often do you get the chance to work with somebody like that?”

Reznor wound up revamping the song in his mobile studio while on tour, and he even came up with the idea of “embedding” one of the show’s glyphs in the music. (Hint: Examine the song’s sound waves on a computer.) Now for the big question: Might Reznor pop up in an episode of Fringe? “If he wants to come act on the show, that’s not tit for tat—that’s an open invitation, and we made that known to him,” says Pinkner. Any ideas on what he may play? “Well, his head would probably end up exploding,” deadpans Pinkner. “There’d be some uncomfortable biology in there one way or another.”

This is a collection of Alessandro Cortini’s BlindOldFreak Buchla 200e modular synthesizer experiments.

“Blindoldfreak is simply whatever comes out of me and my machines, without thinking too much about it,” explains Cortini.

You can get an interesting peak into Cortini’s studio at trash_audio.

Gary Numan performing Cars live with Nine Inch Nails at the O2 Arena London, 15th July 2009.

via petey1978

Whenever we mention Reznor and his new media music experiments, though, the most common comment is that “sure – that works for an established act, but what about unknown artists?”

Reznor addressed that question at the NIN site today with a post that offers his “thoughts on what to do as a new / unknown artist”:

If you are an unknown / lesser-known artist trying to get noticed / established:

Establish your goals. What are you trying to do / accomplish? If you are looking for mainstream super-success (think Lady GaGa, Coldplay, U2, Justin Timberlake) – your best bet in my opinion is to look at major labels and prepare to share all revenue streams / creative control / music ownership. To reach that kind of critical mass these days your need old-school marketing muscle and that only comes from major labels. Good luck with that one.If you’re forging your own path, read on.

Forget thinking you are going to make any real money from record sales. Make your record cheaply (but great) and GIVE IT AWAY. As an artist you want as many people as possible to hear your work. Word of mouth is the only true marketing that matters.

To clarify:

Parter with a TopSpin or similar or build your own website, but what you NEED to do is this – give your music away as high-quality DRM-free MP3s. Collect people’s email info in exchange (which means having the infrastructure to do so) and start building your database of potential customers. Then, offer a variety of premium packages for sale and make them limited editions / scarce goods. Base the price and amount available on what you think you can sell. Make the packages special – make them by hand, sign them, make them unique, make them something YOU would want to have as a fan. Make a premium download available that includes high-resolution versions (for sale at a reasonable price) and include the download as something immediately available with any physical purchase. Sell T-shirts. Sell buttons, posters… whatever.

See the NIN site for the full article.

This video captures Michael Masnick’s Learning From What’s Working: Success Stories From The Music Commerce Frontier.

Masnick is the founder of TechDirt – a technology blog that has been a vocal critic of the music industry’s approach to technology, especially DRM and its opposition to P2P file sharing.

You can safely skip the first 2 1/2 minutes – but the rest is must-view material for musicians.

Masnick relies way too much on the example of Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and other musicians that were established by the traditional music industry.

More interesting are Masnick’s examples of the creative and bizarre ways musicians are connecting with fan.

Give it a view and leave a comment with your thoughts!

Moby

argh. what utter nonsense. this is how the record companies want to protect themselves? suing suburban moms for listening to music? charging $80,000 per song?

punishing people for listening to music is exactly the wrong way to protect the music business. maybe the record companies have adopted the ‘it’s better to be feared than respected’ approach to dealing with music fans. i don’t know, but ‘it’s better to be feared than respected’ doesn’t seem like such a sustainable business model when it comes to consumer choice. how about a new model of ‘it’s better to be loved for helping artists make good records and giving consumers great records at reasonable prices’?

i’m so sorry that any music fan anywhere is ever made to feel bad for making the effort to listen to music.

the riaa needs to be disbanded.

$2 million for sharing three albums worth of songs is clearly insanity.

Using your public user ID to share music illegally, covering up your tracks by replacing your computer’s hard drive, lying about it and then not settling out of court when you’ve got no case is insane, too.

There are going to be a lot of musicians that say they don’t want to be any part of this insanity.

If Moby really wants to make the RIAA irrelevant, though, he should follow the example of Nine Inch Nails, whose free albums releases and Creative Commons licensing have led to huge sales.

NIN: Survivalism live w/ Saul Williams, Atlanta 5.10.09

Saul Williams makes a surprise appearance on stage with Nine Inch Nails for a performance of Survivalism, live in Atlanta, GA, May 10th, 2009

There’s a lot of things that impressed me in this video, ranging from the performance, to the surprise visit from Saul Williams to the awesome array of electronic music gear.

Watch closely, though, and you’ll see that, despite the fact that the video looks fantastic – this is a basically a glorified home movie, one shot, filmed by Rob Sheridan with a Canon 5d Mark II.

Like a lot of things that NIN has been doing, it’s not immediately obvious how insanely innovative this is.

Put a guy on stage with a relatively cheap HD video cameo and let him interact with both the band and the audience, and you’ve changed concert videos forever. There’s no reason a band can’t have an HD concert video made for all their shows, now.

Let me know what you think of this video.

Meanwhile, I’m going back to watch it again and do some synth-spotting.

via ninofficial

Fatz Geronimo and The Rock-afire Explosion do their take on Nine Inch Nail’s 1,000,000.

Fans of Nine Inch Nails got together and placed the bids to have this song choreographed as a Rock-afire Explosion performance.

The Rock-afire Explosion uses state of the retro art Apple II systems, modified to control the animatronics. Check out the documentary below, from the Rock-afire Explosion movie, for more details on the process of “scoring” the animatronics in synch with music.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We reported earlier in the week that Apple had rejected the updated NIN app because of objectionable content.

It’s great to see that Apple used some common sense in this case.

They still need to implement a simple parental guidance system and stop censoring apps over content that would be acceptable in book, movie or music form.

Is it time for Apple to get out of the censorship business, and start slapping a Parental Guidance warning on some apps?

Trent Reznor

The objectionable content?

The Downward Spiral.

Hmmmmm. Wonder what line of what song that was……….

Let me know what you think of Apple’s decision in the comments!

Update: Trent Reznor has posted his thoughts on the issue:

I’ll voice the same issue I had with Wal-Mart years ago, which is a matter of consistency and hypocrisy. Wal-Mart went on a rampage years ago insisting all music they carry be censored of all profanity and “clean” versions be made for them to carry. Bands (including Nirvana) tripped over themselves editing out words, changing album art, etc to meet Wal-Mart’s standards of decency – because Wal-Mart sells a lot of records. NIN refused, and you’ll notice a pretty empty NIN section at any Wal-Mart.

My reasoning was this: I can understand if you want the moral posturing of not having any “indecent” material for sale – but you could literally turn around 180 degrees from where the NIN record would be and purchase the film “Scarface” completely uncensored, or buy a copy of Grand Theft Auto where you can be rewarded for beating up prostitutes. How does that make sense?

You can buy The Downward Fucking Spiral on iTunes, but you can’t allow an iPhone app that may have a song with a bad word somewhere in it. Geez, what if someone in the forum in our app says FUCK or CUNT? I suppose that also falls into indecent material. Hey Apple, I just got some SPAM about fucking hot asian teens THROUGH YOUR MAIL PROGRAM. I just saw two guys having explicit anal sex right there in Safari! On my iPhone!

Come on Apple, think your policies through and for fuck’s sake get your app approval scenario together.

Update 2: Apple has now OK’d the updated Nine Inch Nails app.

NIN: Access is a free app for iPhone and iPod touch that gives you mobile access to nin.com’s media and community features, as well as a new “Nearby” feature that lets you exchange messages and photos with other fans in your area.

The iPhone app furthers Nine Inch Nails lead on other groups in making use of new media and social media to encourage fans interaction.

You can also preview the iPhone app with the video walkthrough below. There’s also a great overview of NIN Access at Wired.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Image: maubrowncow

Trent Reznor And Kevin Rose – photo from the NIN Digg interview session.

Is that the sweetest background ever?

Digg founder Kevin Rose sat down, in front of a wall of modular synthesizers, with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails (NIN) and poses the most popular questions as submitted and voted upon by users of the popular social bookmarking site.

It’s a great interview, with lots of discussion around Nine Inch Nails’ approach to making money in a world of new media.

Do you think Nine Inch Nails’ approach can apply to musicians that aren’t established?

The top questions from the Digg community:

• Your business model still primarily involves selling music either digitally or physically. Why haven’t you embraced advertising as a business model?
• What is the most embarrassing song on your iPod?
• What advice do you have for up and coming bands who chose the internet for distribution over traditional channels?
• What tech gadgets, hardware, software, can you not live without?
• Have the plans to release a Year Zero mini-series on HBO fallen through? Or can we still look forward to a video representation of the album?
• What is your favorite thing you have seen done with your music by a fan of NIN?
• What are some of your favorite video games?
• Will any of the records of your side project Tapeworm, with TOOL frontman Maynard James Keenan, ever be released?
• Since you are a tech artist, are you planning an online concert?
• Is there tension between art director Rob Sheridan and basist Justin Meldal-Johnsen over coverage of the Scientology protest?

Walkthrough of the new Nine Inch Nails iPhone application with Trent Reznor, NIN art director Rob Sheridan, and special guest Kevin Rose of Digg.

The application is a state-of-the-art example of how musicians can use new media to interact with their fans.

NIN: Access is a free app for iPhone and iPod touch that gives you mobile access to nin.com’s media and community features, as well as a new “Nearby” feature that lets you exchange messages and photos with other fans in your area.

NIN: Access will be released in April 2009. More info: http://access.nin.com

Nine Inch Nails has released a new tour sampler – NIN/JA – on their site, and you an also get it for free via BitTorrent.

Trent Reznor, the frontman of Nine Inch Nails, is an advocate of working with Internet technologies, instead of against them.

NIN’s Art Director Rob Sheridan explains:

We use torrents ourselves, and we know that most NIN fans are tech-savvy and familiar with file-sharing, so we want to experiment with ways to use that to our advantage, instead of making the mistake of trying to fight or ignore it, as so many artists and labels do.

Details and previews at the Ninja2009 site.

TicketMaster has essentially been a monopoly for many years – certainly up until Live Nation’s exclusive deal ran out. They could have (and can right now) stop the secondary market dead in its tracks by doing the following: limit the amount of sales per customer, print names on the tickets and require ID / ticket matches at the venue.

We know this works because we do it for our pre-sales.

Why don’t THEY do it? It’s obvious – they make a lot of money fueling the secondary market. TicketMaster even bought a re-seller site and often bounces you over to that site to buy tickets (TicketsNow.com)!

Nothing’s going to change until the ticketing entity gets serious about stopping the problem – which of course they don’t see as a problem. The ultimate way to hurt scalpers is to not support them. Leave them holding the merchandise.

Don’t buy from scalpers, and be suspect of artists singing the praises of the Live Nation / TicketMaster merger. What’s in it for them?

Not even Reznor can escape the TicketMaster monopoly – but at least he’s working to keep them honest.

I’d like to see premium ticket sales move to an open auction. That would at least be fair and transparent.

What do you think of Reznor’s comments and the state of concert tickets in the US?

Trent Reznor has announced upcoming NIN/JA tour dates…..

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s what we can tell you so far:

Fri-May-08 West Palm Beach, FL [Cruzan Amphitheatre]
Sat-May-09 Tampa, FL [Ford Amphitheatre]
Sun-May-10 Atlanta, GA [Lakewood Amphitheatre]
Thu-May-14 Albuquerque, NM [Journal Pavilion]
Fri-May-15 Phoenix, AZ [Cricket Wireless Pavilion]
Sat-May-16 Chula Vista, CA [Cricket Wireless Amphitheater]
Mon-May-18 Las Vegas, NV [The Pearl]
Wed-May-20 Irvine, CA [Verizon Wireless Amphitheater – Irvine Meadows]
Fri-May-22 Mountain View, CA [Shoreline Amphitheatre]
Tue-May-26 Englewood, CO [Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre]
Wed-May-27 Kansas City, MO [Starlight Theatre]
*** Fri-May-29 Chicago, IL [Charter One Pavilion] NINE INCH NAILS Only
Sat-May-30 Noblesville, IN [Verizon Wireless Music Center]
Sun-May-31 Clarkston, MI [DTE Energy Music Theatre]
Tue-Jun-02 Toronto, ON [Molson Amphitheatre]
Wed-Jun-03 Darien Lake, NY [Darien Lake Amphitheatre]
Fri-Jun-05 Camden, NJ [Tweeter Center At The Waterfront]
Sat-Jun-06 Holmdel, NJ [PNC Bank Arts Center]
Sun-Jun-07 Wantagh, NY [Nikon at Jones Beach Music Theater]
Tue-Jun-09 Columbia, MD [Merriweather Post Pavilion]
Wed-Jun-10 Burgettstown, PA [Post-Gazette Pavilion]
Fri-Jun-12 Charlotte, NC [Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre]

I’ve got a feeling we’ll be hitting Starlight for this Nine Inch Nails/Jane’s Addiction event, though it sounds like it will be much less electronic than the last tour.

This news story about sampling from 1985 features Cleveland’s own Exotic Birds, a synth pop group that opened for groups like Culture Club and Eurythmics.

I’m not sure which is more awesome – the Exotic Birds or the horrible narration about the issues raised by sampling.

Let me know what you think!

via WorshipTrentOrDie:

The ‘Exotic Birds’ was a pop music group formed in Cleveland, Ohio in 1983 by three ‘Cleveland Institute of Music’ percussion students, Andy Kubiszewski, Tom Freer and Tim Adams. They wrote their own music and were described as synth pop and dance. They achieved mainly local success but appeared as an opening band for ‘Culture Club’ and ‘Eurythmics’.The band eventually grew to five members. Adams left to do orchestral work, but Mark Best and Frank Vale signed on. Then by 1985, Trent Reznor joined the band on keyboards, programming and backing vocals. Shortly after that, Trent’s roommate, Chris Vrenna replaced Freer on drums. But neither Trent nor Chris wrote any of the songs. By 1988 the band had broken up.