Trent Reznor posted yesterday that the Beastie Boys’ Ill Communication reissue is “how you sell music today”. As a rebuttal to the usual “that only works for established artists” replies, he’s followed this up with an extended post on what artists who haven’t reached the Beasties or NIN level of profile can do to get established.

NIN’s $300 deluxe edition of Ghosts sold out in under two days, grossing $750,000. The first week combined sales grossed $1.6million, despite being released for free under a Creative Commons license. (Photo CC Nick Humphries)

Having been part of a reasonably high profile band with an album released through the label system, Trent’s post reads like a list of “how I wish it had been”. Every point he makes is absolutely spot on. The article is filled with active verbs. Make. Give. Sell. Share. Release. Start. Engage. Film. This is the crux of how creators succeed in the digital age: They do things. Rather than waiting for someone else to tell them how to make money from a product that can be easily garnered for free, the people who are doing well are making it up as they go along, trying new things. You know… being creative.

As a web developer, director and general creative tech geek, Trent’s closers are especially poignant:

The database you are amassing should not be abused, but used to inform people that are interested in what you do when you have something going on – like a few shows, or a tour, or a new record, or a webcast, etc.
Have your MySpace page, but get a site outside MySpace – it’s dying and reads as cheap / generic. Remove all Flash from your website. Remove all stupid intros and load-times. MAKE IT SIMPLE TO NAVIGATE AND EASY TO FIND AND HEAR MUSIC (but don’t autoplay). 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. Utilize the multitude of tools available to you for very little cost of any – Flickr / YouTube / Vimeo / SoundCloud / Twitter etc.

Check out the rest of the article.

For digital artists, a lot of the web and technological networking comes easier than to rock bands. When a laptop is part of your rig, hopefully you understand computers better than someone who exclusively hits their instrument with sticks (SPD20s aside), because you use the computer for music regularly. Ed.: This is a simple fact – if you’re a digital artist, regardless of your instrument, you spend more time behind the screen than people who are conventional instruments – so you should have no excuse for making the most of that technology once the production and performance phase are done. -PK We’re also in the middle of a huge mobile web expansion phase. Now that everyone has web enabled computers in their pockets, what you can do while you’re out there playing shows is getting better and better; I just spent the evening configuring an online store which can be administered via its own iPhone app. If this had been available two years ago, a whole lot more CD orders would have been delivered on time.

Giving some solid metrics to bolster Trent’s advice, Michael Masnick’s (founder of Techdirt) recent presentation at the NARM 2009 conference is truly fantastic.

NARM 2009 State Of The Industry: Michael Masnick from NARM on Vimeo.

The presentation is quite long at 31 minutes, but he breaks it up with 515 slides, so it feels punchy. It expands on many of the points Trent makes, and touches on some themes we’ve been interested in here at CDM. Interestingly, he gives some revenue and sales statistics on the Nine Inch Nails “Ghosts” release: $1.6 million gross in the first week, from an album which was released for free under a Creative Commons license.

Having been quite deeply involved in the “old” way of doing things, and having experimented in the last year with faster, cheaper live performance videography and similarly streamlined “studio” production, I feel that I’m replete with the kool aid, and comfortable with a future in which I’m not looking for “a contract”. In fact, this evening I called my bandmate over and convinced him that the album we’re about to record and shoot will be released entirely under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Finished tracks and stems, music videos and source files, animation sprites, live footage, album artwork, and whatever else we create.

I’ve long believed that “free” and “open” is a big part of the future of creative industries. The label system has kept creators and fans at arms length. Last year I was a rightsholder on an album which spent a week in the top 5 sellers on iTunes in Australia. I know nothing about any of the listeners who put it there. Next album release, I want to know all of those fans by name.

Jaymis at Create Digital Motion was admiring this video and watching the Lemur action at the beginning. It further inspires me to custom-install a touch overlay on my laptop, which isn’t terribly expensive – having touch in a live playing situation is really quite nice.

But as I watched the video and its modular synth action and Novation gear, I actually found myself thinking about something else: why aren’t more bands this tight? Most importantly, why don’t more bands simply use in-ear monitors when they’re working? Lots of bands now are adding drum machines again, working with more complex rhythms and harmonies, mixing electronic and acoustic elements. Yet you’ll often see them playing live trying to stay together with a monitor on the floor, and they not surprisingly go out of tune and out of step.

Shure makes a number of fairly affordable models with different in-ear attachments for adapting to different situations. Frankly, just about anything would work. There’s also no crime to routing a separate output with a click track. That’s something even a lot of “serious music” contemporary composers are doing these days. It’s not always the right answer, but there are now situations across genres where it makes sense.

The main thing is, set up so you can take advantage of the musicianship you’ve got. And on that note, while readers here regularly knock Nine Inch Nails – something along the lines of, “if they weren’t NIN, you wouldn’t care” – imagine if you hadn’t heard of this band. They’re an extraordinary group of musicians. Plenty of brilliant musicians labor in obscurity, but it is comforting to know that some of the light of fame is hitting people who can play amazingly well.

Now, sing along: “You will never ever ever ever / own this much gear.”

What? That’s not what they’re singing?

(Actually, the lyrics “You will never ever ever ever get to me in here” can also work nicely on the door to your music studio.)

NIN Visuals:

For once, the visual environment is actually upstaging the sound gear lust. See this video on the “stealth” LED screens, cameras, particles, and … lasers. Mmmmm, lasers.

LEDs In The Sky: MomentFactory’s “Show Environment” for Nine Inch Nails [Create Digital Motion]

• In many circles, Metallica is no longer cool or never was cool.
• Lawyer make people MAD. Angry. Smash. (Apparently in addition to going after 60,000 pages of fans on Napster, Metallica doesn’t even like fan-made buttons.)
• Metallica is not Radiohead or Trent Reznor. (Stop the presses!)
• Even if you’re not Radiohead or Trent Reznor, you probably want your fans on your side. Pitchforks and torches tend to be a bad sign.

Of course, some might see the doomsday scenario of Internet music releases, in which fans determine that all music should be free and you can’t make money on releases any more. Big bands give away their stuff for free, the independent artist dies, music isn’t made any more, etc., etc. But given glowing fans proclaiming that they’re “glad I could shell out 40 pounds for the discbox” of In Rainbows, that seems unlikely.

And that’s the fundamental nature of fans. They’re looking for ways to give you their money so you can give them something back. Lesson learned by Metallica: don’t piss them off.

Fans Rip Metallica a New One [Wired.com Listening Post; enjoy the Napster-era parody video]

Photo: massdistraction, via Flickr.

Trent sez: “Buy all these music formats from meeeeeeeeeee!” Photo: Jenna Foxton.

Artists are known to mouth off a bit about the Future of Music and Digital Distribution and whatnot, but Trent Reznor is putting his money — and not money — where his mouth is.

Nine Inch Nails Menu of Ordering Options for Ghosts I-IV

via Mashable: Practice What You Preach: Nine Inch Nails Gives Away New Album

And they certainly have their bases covered with their new album “Ghosts”:

• Get the first volume of the album free on torrent sites (or via the NIN site)
• Pay US$5 for a download of all 36 tracks (take that, Radiohead!)
• Get a 2 CD box set for US$10 (which also includes immediate full download of the tracks)
• US$75 gets you the 2 CDs, a data DVD with the digital tracks, and a Blu-Ray disc with 96/24 stereo and accompanying slideshow
• US$300 Adds four LPs on vinyl, two prints, and Trent’s John Hancock — limited-run 2500 pieces

I think they should have just kept going. You know, $800 gets you cassette tapes, Pro Tools session files, 8-tracks, surround sound. $50,000 adds an IMAX film (projector not included) and one of those little plastic mini records. $500,000 adds a DIY planetarium show, plus a special Buddha Box edition and a low-power FM radio transmitter so you can self-broadcast the album. $1 million and you get a Jaguar pre-loaded with a specially-signed sound system that plays the album, plus reel-to-reel multitracks. $500 million and Trent comes to your house, brings his studio rig and console, and re-records the album for you in your living room.

Before you assume the downloads are worthless, though, even the torrent file includes PDF “liner notes” and 320 kbps MP3 files. Buy the download and you have an option of either FLAC lossless or Apple Lossless audio — something I know readers here have complained about.

There’s only one problem. The fact that musical superstars are experimenting with various formats amounts to great research into what people may want. But if you’re not a Nine Inch Nails junkie, this is all awfully … well, complicated. For lesser-known artists, it seems like finding just one or two solutions that make most people happy is a better route, and it’s not clear what those are yet.

I’m personally most interested to see how the torrent thing works. Then again, with bandwidth costs plummeting, serving up your own audio — even lossless audio — becomes a viable option for artists and small labels. And so far, the torrent doesn’t seem to be cannibalizing the for-fee options, as NIN’s site says they’re experience high volume of traffic and orders. If enough people spring for the higher-cost options, the free versions may pay for themselves.

No matter how many music tech toys you have, no matter how many music tech toys you’ve ever seen, Nine Inch Nails still has more. Michael Hetrick writes to point us to his latest post over on KVR:

Total Gear-Porn on new NIN site [KVR Audio Forums]

It’s especially nice to see some of the no-prisoners, raunchy, tube beauty of Metasonix in there.

Of course, we’ve seen Trent and NIN deliver the gear lust before:

Hotel Room Studio: NIN’s Rack-Mounted Dual G5s

Inside NIN’s Studio on Audiohead

nine inch nails: current [nin.com]

Apparently taken in a hotel room, Trent Reznor, Saul Williams, and Atticus Ross are on the road with their road-racked G5s and other audio gear. (Check out the cheap-and-quick recording tip: use a blanket or curtains to make an impromptu recording booth.) Looks like they’re also running Pro Tools via a Digidesign 002. And I don’t know where they stashed that Cinema Display. The rack mount itself appears to be a custom foam installation, like a bigger version of the racked Mac mini we saw last year. I think that is custom, not something commercially available, but feel free to let me know otherwise.

Artists letting you rethink or destroy their work? You bet — Trent is at it again.

When Nine Inch Nails released their single The Hand That Feeds in GarageBand 2.0 format, it was a huge hit. Hundreds of fans posted remixes in the first week after the release. But Windows users — and even GarageBand 1.x Mac users — were left in the dark.

Now, Trent Reznor is back with another NIN single, ready to remix / mash-up with raw tracks, but this time he’s got the multi-format thing down. The new single, Only, is available for users of several Windows/Mac DAWs:

Mac: Apple GarageBand 2.x or later (also compatible with Logic Express and Pro 7.x)

Mac/Windows: Ableton Live (hurrah!)

Mac/Windows: Pro Tools (HD, LE, M-Powered)

Windows: Sony ACID (Xpress/Pro)

I’m not going to pull any punches: I’m psyched about the Live version more than any of these. Sure, Pro Tools is the software NIN used to make the track, but Live’s remix tools are without par among these options, so if you’re ready to really radically remix and mash this one, Live is the way to go. That said, I’m equally excited this isn’t an exclusive of any one app: if experimentation is the aim, having choices is great. More on this story and artists letting listeners remake their music:

The Hand that Feeds – analysis of previous single, and why this track wasn’t produced in Logic as some had speculated

Beatmixed on the previous single (and why it was a pain for Windows users

Remix-friendly songs in the near future?

Audiohead goes inside NIN’s studio

Digidesign.com on the new single

As readers pointed out, I got things a bit wrong on what Trent Reznor uses in the studio: it’s not a matter of Pro Tools OR Logic. It’s Pro Tools AND Logic AND Reaktor and Absynth and Traktor and GRM Tools and three Macs and three interfaces (with high-end HD Digi hardware) and a Minimoog and a Nord and Alesis and, who knows, probably a giraffe who can produce phat lead sounds with his baritone voice.

Given that, it may surprise (and refresh) you to hear that Mr. Reznor thinks that it’s not about the tools. In Stephanie Jorgi’s superb 4-page interview with him on Audiohead.net, Reznor warns that the danger of lots of tech is that “it’s easier to make perfect, polished music” — music that could be ultimately “boring.” All those toys and tools for him are, not surprisingly, just a way to find dangerous and spontaneous, human parts of the music.

So what are you waiting for? Add some banjo to the new single. (And have a look at the great Audiohead site for some great interviews and reviews — thanks for the links, gang.)

I’ve been playing with the Nine Inch Nails track (reported by many, many sites in the last few days: NIN made their new single available in GarageBand 2.0 format). I have to say, this is a lot of fun. To me, the song sounds better with more tracks muted: the lesson here is, all of us are loading way too much into a mix. (I know, I know, it’s NIN: but listen to just the vocals alone and tell me it’s not a lot more interesting bare?)

Trent Reznor suggests he wanted us to be able “to create remixes, experiment, embellish or destroy what’s there.” And what did Trent’s posse do with it? From the readme: “All work effectively stopped for a while – it’s fun to mess around with. I’ve now heard a country version of the track as well as an abstract Latin interpretation (thanks, Leo).”

So it wasn’t just me adding banjo. Do I think more songs should be released this way? Yes, I do. Being able just to turn off certain tracks makes the CD more live, lets you hear things you wouldn’t have heard.

For the record, I’m guessing NIN did not use Apple Logic Pro as some have speculated on the Web. Trent, for his part, says in the readme they used Pro Tools. It’s no surprise Logic showed up in the creator codes: Logic supports OMF import and GarageBand export, so they went that route to get the file from PT to GB. Too bad: Trent, give Logic a try the next time you fire it up. (I can see it now — Trent’s Dub remix!)

The normal release of the NIN single The Hand That Feeds
is, of course, on iTunes — in audio, not GarageBand format. (Missed opportunity, Apple?)