This Wired article was so informative and so interesting that I couldn’t wait until the end of the month to post it as V11’s April Post of the Month.

The article is definitely LONG, especially for Internet articles. However, it offers some incredible insight as to what is going on behind the scenes of the most forwarding thinking band for internet marketing – Nine Inch Nails.

The article describes NIN’s new iPhone app as well as highlights the importance of fan interaction, and will give any band an endless supply of things to consider for their website.

The article also highlights the future and depth of fan interaction and music marketing.

Here are some excepts:

Label execs have no idea where to turn. “They’re in such a state of denial it’s impossible for them to understand what’s happening,” Trent Reznor says. “As an artist, you are now the marketer.” And the only marketing vehicle that makes sense is the net.
——-

“We’re using what people are already using every day anyway,” adds Rob Sheridan [a Reznor/NIN collaborator]… . “It’s media on the fans’ terms, how they want to use it, instead of trying to be like this” — he wraps his arms around his torso as if trying to hold himself in — “which is the old-media strategy.”

——-
Over the past year, NIN.com has quietly evolved into a series of interlocking services designed to deliver maximum benefit to the fans at minimal expense to the artist. To build it out, Reznor decided to use off-the-shelf resources — Blogger, Twitter, FeedBurner, Flickr, YouTube — rather than trying to duplicate what other people had already created. “They’re going to do a better job than we are,” he explains, “and they’re going to have a lot more resources to put into it.”

——-

If the labels had tried to connect with fans online instead of dragging them into court, [Reznor] figures, the music industry wouldn’t be collapsing today.

Read full Wired article.