NIN’s Trent Reznor Teaches Record Industry a Good (Business) Lesson
P2POn has followed the NIN’s unconventional approach toward promoting their music which culminated with having "Ghosts I-IV" becoming Amazon.com's last year’s top-selling album even though the album had been released for free on torrents and, moreover, had been released under a Creative Commons license which let any music fan get as creative with it as he/she could.
According to Techdirt's Michael Masnick who gave a presentation at MidemNet on January 17th in Cannes, France, ("Serving Your Fans – The Trent Reznor Case Study") the coordinates of success couldn’t be easier:
Connect With Fans (CwF) + Reason To Buy (RtB) = The Business Model ($$$$)
Trent Reznor has definitely respected the principle above.
Masnick emphasized the error of judgment most of the artist make in thinking that the music fan is unconditionally obliged to buy that particular music.
"And, so they [the artists] put something out with a price tag, but without doing a very good job convincing fans why they should buy. There was no real reason — and then they seem to lash out at their fans for hurting them. The fault, however, lies with the musician (like any business) who failed to give a proper reason to buy, and falsely assumed that fans had some sort of obligation to buy. If an artist believes there's an obligation to buy, fans will often educate the artist very quickly."
Given that most of the record labels just want things done their way – minimum investment and customer-care, maximum income – and that no one but the artists themselves can actually connect to fans thus creating the groundwork not only for expectations but for support as well, artists should probably look at the whole matter of getting involved in the business aspect of their work a bit differently.
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As others have pointed out before and Masnick now reinforces, the record industry should definitely shift its focal point from fighting illegal file sharing (which is not going anywhere) to "return to business (RtB)" and study ways to "compete with free (CwF)":
Compete with Free (CwF) + Return to Business (RtB) = The Business Model ($$$$)
The video below is quite edifying and definitely worth watching:
