Posts Tagged ‘trent reznor’

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Music, tech, and culture roundup

September 18, 2009

canadianMusicWikipedia

Colbert Report to stream albums. The Flaming Lips were on the The Colbert Report on Wednesday night, and the Mountain Goats (whoo!) are scheduled to be guests in a couple of weeks. More interesting, though, is that both artists will be streaming their albums, before the official release dates, on the Colbert website.  Here’s hoping it leads to new fans and bigger sales. [via Underwire]

Canadian music wiki. Journalism student and CBC Radio 3 intern Amanda Ash is working on putting together a Wikipedia-style database of Canadian music as her thesis project, tapping into CanCon-loving music fans (whence the awesome illo, above).  She’s soliciting ideas – go help her out.

Another fun online musical toy. In the same vein as the online Tenori-On, there’s a web-based musical instrument, Nudge, with a range of sounds and tempos. If you come up with something you like, you can embed it in your blog or share it with your friends. Warning: making pretty melodies is quite the timesuck. [via Indie Music Tech].

There and back again. Over at the New Yorker, Sasha Frere-Jones has a thoughtful profile of Trent Reznor, tracing his journey from indie, to major label, to indie again.

What does filesharing mean for composers? Lyricist and composer Björn Ulvaeus (sound familiar?)  argues that musicians can ‘sing for their supper,’ but songwriters can’t, and they might end up the big losers with declining music sales. This probably explain why composers and songwriters are trying to get a cut from 30-second song previews on iTunes.

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Music and tech roundup, part 2

June 17, 2009

sympathiestotheband

Part 2 of this week’s music and tech roundup (part 1 is here).

The 10 Commandments of Music 2.0… Hypebot’s concise list of how to engage your followers as an artist. Our fave is #3: “Thou Shalt Giveaway Free Music – Like Jesus and the loaf of bread, give your flock a gift that multiplies as they pass it around.”

…which Trent Reznor is no longer following. The pioneer of social media in music bails, citing the preponderance of jerks and trolls and haters on the Internet. Ironically, this might be a case where being a ‘legacy’ musician (ie pre-dating social media) may be a detriment, not an asset; Reznor’s take on the situation is that some of his fans are upset that the real, Twittering Reznor doesn’t match their long-held image of him.

Why people buy music. A survey of a thousand or so customers at independent music stores revealed a couple of interesting things: one, friends were the biggest influencers of music purchase. The second was that 65% of music store shoppers spent less than 10% of their music spending on digital purchases, which strongly suggests that they are a distinctive subset of the music-buying public (via @pampelmoose).

Virgin Media and Universal team up to offer unlimited downloads for a flat rate. Gizmodo reports that the record label and cable company are set to offer a new subscription service that will let you either stream or download (as DRM-free MP3s) as much music as you want for £10-15. It seems pretty steep for music from a single label, but it’s an interesting experiment (thanks, @mchangolin!)

[Image: The Crowd at a Rock Show on Subnormality; click for larger image]

Thou Shalt Giveaway Free Music – Like Jesus and the loaf of bread, give your flock a gift that multiplies as they pass it around.

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Trent Reznor on the future of music

April 15, 2009

nin-janes

Trent Reznor, always a man to call it like he sees it, gives great interview to the Guardian. The NIN iPhone app went live last night, and Reznor uses the occasion of its release to share his thoughts:

People are going to steal your music whether you like it or not; it’s out there, it’s free… You’re never going to make a lot of money selling records like you used to, that’s a fact. It’s over… Record labels do not know how to deal with the new media environment that they’re confronted with. They’ve made their fortunes selling plastic discs and now no one wants to buy plastic discs – they’re just trying to get their fingers in every other pie, but they’re so greedy and ignorant they’re not prepared to do what they have to do… All we’re trying to do is make something cool. Something that as a fan you’d say, ‘Hey, I want to have that’. If we can monetise it, then that’s fine, no problem.

You can read the full Guardian article on iPhone apps here, and the Wired Underwire blog has a great article on what  Reznor has done since leaving his label 18 months ago, including releasing music under Creative Commons licenses to encourage sharing and remixing, as well as harnessing social networking to create a fan community. It’s well worth the read.

MP3: Nine Inch Nails – Discipline [download/buy]

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