Trent gets it.

Regardless of your opinion on the music of Nine Inch Nails, you have to give a lot of respect to a musician that has managed to step outside the mainstream music biz. Trent Reznor managed to extract his band Nine Inch Nails from their contract with Universal Music Group's Interscope records. Since doing so he has come up with several unique ways to get his music out to the fans.

Rather than fight the way things were going.. he embraced it and has found a way to keep things going for himself. No one buys CDs anymore. The people who are buying music still are doing it in digital downloads. The only reason people buy CDs these days is if there is some special benefit to it. The same reason people buy collectors editions of videos or games or books. So when NIN released their last album, he put it online where you could download it for the crazy low price of.. FREE. He offered it for sale at the same time though as an iTunes download for 9 bucks for the whole album and 10 bucks for a numbered limited edition CD as well. He sold 250 thousand of them.

He had this to say in an article on Wired:

"One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract," he says. "I said, 'Wait — you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it? Who the fuck made that rule? Oh! The record labels made it because artists are dumb and they'll sign anything' — like I did."

Trent is going even further these days. His website offers free downloads for virtually anything an fan can think off from music to photos to videos. He does have a tech team that handles the core technology of the site, but everything else is handled and monitored by 'super fans' that gain the status and some additional benefits in exchange for monitoring and maintining the site. He allows and helps distribute fan remixes of his songs.. to the tune of 11,000 different ones already. He allows fans to upload and download pics from all the NIN shows and performances and ties them in to a Flikr / Wiki interface so people can search for shows they were at. Some 30K pics are supposed to be avail on their website now.

His latest venture is an iPhone app that ties in with a GPS system and a twitter interface that allows Trent to post backstage photos and events up for the fans out front to see while they are waiting to get in to a show. Fans out front can use the GPS functions to see what fans near them are also plugged into the app and share pics and video and conversations. This iPhone app is also being offered for free.

As much as record companies would like to pretend its not happening, their music distribution system is going the way of the dodo. People are not running down to the mall to pick up the latest CDs. Even the people who are paying for music legitimately are buying individual songs or albums off online distribution sites. There are services that offer access to catelogs of 3 million or more songs for a flat fee of 15 bucks a month. Considering the 15-20 cost of one CD which you may only really want 3 or 4 songs off of.. well its not hard to see why this business model is no longer working.

I hope that Trent's pioneering ideas help pave the way for other artists to embrace the technology out there and find new ways to connect with fans and distribute their music without having to enslave themselves to a major label. It would be nice to know that when you do pay for music, that the money you plunk down for it is actually going to the artist.

The web, like it or not, is here to stay. Fight it.. or get on for the ride.