Trent Reznor

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

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. Read more…

We’ve given Trent Reznor and NIN a lot of credit for pioneering new ways of connecting with audiences via the Internet. Reznor has used free music downloads, Creative Commons licensing and fan remixes to reinvigorate his career.

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!

Trent Reznor just announced, via Twitter, that Apple has now approved an update to Nine Inch Nails’ iPhone app.

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?