NIN Fans Turn Free HD Concert Footage into Free Blu-ray, DVD Releases

January 8, 2010 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Downloads, Movies, MP3, Digital Audio & Games 

Download for free Nine Inch Nails concert film, a huge project carried out by fans

Nine Inch Nails has undeniably revolutionized the way artists can distribute their music, handling the task themselves, and generating revenue from their works. The band has become famous for being unreserved when it comes to offering for free audio and video material to the fans.

While around the U.S. for the Lights In The Sky Tour in the spring of 2009, NIN released 405GB of free raw HD footage from the tours to their fans who were given the chance and liberty to use it as they wish.

On Wednesday, the group This One Is On Us has made a huge release (for free, of course), their own personal concept, in all popular formats one may want out of that free footage NIN had offered.

Here’s an excerpt from the post:

“Fans have edited thousands of videos from the footage, assembled their own DVDs and live albums, even held theatrical screenings of their creations. And now, the ambitious and well-organized group known as This One Is On Us have released their massive, highly-anticipated creation, Another Version of the Truth: The Gift.

For 12 months, a core team of dozens of fans and a network of thousands spanning the entire globe pooled their efforts to create this professional-quality 1080p 5.1 concert film, and have released it in every format from Blu-ray and DVD to iPod and YouTube. It combines footage from all three shows and includes DVD menus, bonus footage, a PDF booklet, and more. That something of this scale was produced entirely by fans, on their own time, purely for the sake of giving something back to the community, is absolutely unprecedented. You can read all about the project and find all the download links here, or watch it immediately on YouTube here. Theatrical screenings are already being organized, you can find more info about those here.”

This is yet another example of a devoted fanbase and a policy of openness combining to fill in blanks left by old media barriers. The entire NIN camp is absolutely thrilled that treating our fans with respect and nurturing their creativity has led to such an overwhelming outpour of incredible content, and that we now have such a high quality souvenir from our most ambitious tour ever. Or, as Trent simply put it, Nine Inch Nails fans kick ass.”

Go here to download the film

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NIN Trent Reznor Answers Your Questions

April 3, 2009 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Downloads 
For Trent it has become a habit to maintain an open relationship with the general public through the Interent

For Trent it has become a habit to maintain an open relationship with the general public through the Interent

The always inventive Trend Reznor, Nine Inch Nails frontman but also recently proven digital-music visionary will participate in Digg’s next Dialogg session and already a set of burning questions eagerly collected by users of the social news site await for him.

The session will be unfolding like this: Reznor is going to answer the questions that accumulated most Diggs and it’s already clear that P2P will be at the core of them. Here’s a taste of what has queued up waiting for the NIN’s leader to answer:

“Trent – you’ve embraced Creative Commons and file sharing, but your business model (aside from touring) still primarily involves selling music either digitally or physically. Why haven’t you embraced advertising as a business model, e.g. placing ads on your torrent tracker? Why let Pirate Bay take all the ad revenue you deserve? Furthermore, why aren’t you building a brand new record label based on a modern business model?”

“What is the most embarrassing song on your iPod?”

You’ve got one more day to propose new questions and vote the ones already posted so hurry up and find out the views of a man who changed the face of music industry and music creation as well.

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Nine Inch Nails Continues to Offer Music for Free, Jane’s Addiction and Street Sweeper Join In

March 24, 2009 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Downloads, Entertainment Industry, Movies, MP3, Digital Audio & Games 

nine-inch-nails-continues-to-offer-music-for-free-janes-addiction-and-street-sweeper-join-inNine Inch Nails has done it again! New tracks from one of the most non-conformist bands of our times have been made available online for free. Actually, this was a joint action from NIN, Jane’s Addiction and Street Sweeper (formed by Tom Morello, former Audioslave guitarist). They have each offered two tracks to be added on free EP that is available over the Internet.

The EP is intended as a way to promote the upcoming summer tour of the bands. It contains ‘Whores’ and ‘Chip Away’ from Jane’s Addiction’s 1987 debut album, (produced by NIN frontman and, according to many, musical geniusTrent Reznor) Street Sweeper’s ‘The Oath’ and ‘Clap For The Killers’and NIN tracks Not So Pretty Now’ and ‘Non-Entity’.

You can download the EP at http://ninja2009.com/ just as long as you live in the 21st century and have an e-mail address.

NIN has already a history in releasing free EP online. Even now the guys are offering for free in “high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE.”

The official NIN site reads:

Check out the NIN/JA tour site, now live. Here you’ll find various tour info, media from each band, streaming music, a downloadable tour sampler AND new multi-tracks for you to create your own remixes. We will probably be giving some physical things as well as “opportunities” away as the tour approaches (we’re making this up as we go) so check back from time to time.

See you out there!

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NIN’s Trent Reznor Teaches Record Industry a Good (Business) Lesson

February 11, 2009 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Digital Media, Mobile Phones, P2P technology, Entertainment Industry, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services, Movies, MP3, Digital Audio & Games 

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:

 

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Nine Inch Nails Album Released on Torrents for Free Becomes Amazon’s Top-Selling Album of 2008

January 8, 2009 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Downloads, Tops 

Last month we reported that the album “Ghosts I-IV” by the famous industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails not only sold more than $1.6 million within a week after the release (many of which due to voluntary donations of $5 per download) but was nominated for the 51st annual Grammy awards. And all that was achieved with an album the members of the band voluntarily released on torrents.

But as if that wasn’t impressive enough, now comes the real bomb granted to make the RIAA choke on their words: NIN’s “Ghosts I-IV” was announced as being Amazon’s top selling MP3 album of 2008. How about that?!

“Now that we’re no longer constrained by a record label, we’ve decided to personally upload Ghosts I, the first of the four volumes, to various torrent sites, because we believe BitTorrent is a revolutionary digital distribution method, and we believe in finding ways to utilize new technologies instead of fighting them,” NIN frontman Trent Reznor said.

Reznor who proved his non-conformism, creativity and ingeniosity in music beyond any doubt, also proved these attributes as a “manager” and his vision did pay off. The man offered the group’s latest material under a Creative Commons license so that music fans worldwide could freely mix and share NIN’s music.

Creative Commons blog has a post applauding this success:

NIN fans could have gone to any file sharing network to download the entire CC-BY-NC-SA album legally. Many did, and thousands will continue to do so. So why would fans bother buying files that were identical to the ones on the file sharing networks? One explanation is the convenience and ease of use of NIN and Amazon’s MP3 stores. But another is that fans understood that purchasing MP3s would directly support the music and career of a musician they liked.

The next time someone tries to convince you that releasing music under CC will cannibalize digital sales, remember that Ghosts I-IV broke that rule, and point them here.

As Ars Technica notices : “Reznor actually made a ton of cash from even those basic digital bits. Forget about the deluxe artwork and the high-priced, limited-edition extras; Reznor actually sold more copies of the basic Ghosts I-IV albums through Amazon’s MP3 store than did any other act in 2008. He beat out Coldplay, Death Cab for Cutie, Vampire Weekend, Beck, and hundreds of others, and he did it without a label and by giving the music away.”

So what other better example could there be for both the RIAA and other musicians that torrent releases such as this from NIN don’t mean the death of sales and the bankruptcy of the artists (provided that the music is good and the price is decent)?

 

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