Trent Reznor: What to do as a new/unknown artist | Hacker News Reader

Trent Reznor: What to do as a new/unknown artist

forum.nin.com

150 pointsKC8ZKF28 comments

This is the most spot-on "tutorial" for today's musicians I've read so far. As a musician (formerly on a major label) with a hacker background, I agree with every single word. It is still hard for musicians, however, to give away their music for free, especially if money was spent producing it.

My band has been working the way described here for 3-4 years now. We're not famous but we have our fan base and we know there are people willing to pay for stuff. It's not enough to cover our living expenses but maybe we'll get there one day. Next stop: ramen-profitable...

Still, as the only Internet-savvy member in the band, it's hard to explain this to my band mates. E.g. we get lots of requests from dummers for our songs without the drum tracks so they could play along. They'd pay much more than for a regular album. And they'd upload videos to YouTube which would be free promotion for us. But I cannot get our drummer to agree to releasing these versions.

Most musicians don't get it. Yet.

You should link your band's site in your profile.

I read your comment and thought "hey, might as well see if they are any good", but then you didn't give a link or even mention the band's name... so I couldn't.

Yeah, what's the band?

Musicians might not like to be seen talking "business". It's just impolite.

I, as a musician, think you're making too much of this.

If he's worried about someone finding this when reading about the band he could obfuscate (rot13, etc) the name.

Which is why I said just put it in the profile. He doesn't have to beat us over the head with his band's name, but surely there is no taboo against casually dropping it when it's the subject of the conversation.

I'm here as a hacker rather than a musician so I didn't put the band URL in my profile. Anyway, this is the band: http://www.rivodrei.de. We're German so most of you won't understand the lyrics. (There's some English information here: http://www.rivodrei.de/en/) That's also one of the reasons it's on a much smaller scale than you would expect.

These are a few things we did:

-I built this website as a community website early on. There's some additional material when you sign up (e.g. demo recordings etc.). You can find out which other fans went to the same concerts and communicate with them. There's a shop, guestbook, Google Maps integration, galleries, and a forum. Couldn't find any off-the-shelve package that did all of this together so I had to code it myself.

-All our videos are zero budget. People like them anyway (they don't care about quality so much). We're currently shooting more videos for our new album.

-We gave away a few tracks in the past and I'd like to do it for our next album which is due in the fall. But like I said, I have a feeling I will fail to convince my drummer/bassist.

-Remix contest: http://www.rivodrei.de/remix/ (And yes, we could give away all individual tracks of all songs but the demand doesn't seem to be as high as for the no-drums version where everything else is pre-mixed.)

-Live webcasting from the studio during our recordings for the new album (via former Mogulus.com).

-Some fun stuff such as this one: http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2008/01/the-... (This is in English, btw.)

-We try to collect email addresses as much as we can, especially at concerts. Newsletters are sent about once a month and people can opt out any time.

-About the use of Flash: There's a little box at the top right with pictures of live concerts. I have a feeling that people thought they were ads because of the animation.

-We have a MySpace page but for many months now, we've been attracting mostly spam. I am considering deleting our profile there. We haven't used Twitter yet because it hasn't taken off that much in Germany yet but when it does, we will use it more. We have a Facebook page and that seems to gain some traction now. YouTube is doing ok. No Flickr account. (We have our own gallery and I'm too lazy to post all pictures twice.) I like to focus on our own website because all these services come and go.

-I answer all (serious) emails. This is very important. And it's funny how excited some people are to get an email from the singer and not from some management. ;)

It takes a lot of time to shoot on all these channels and create new material (music/videos) at the same time. I'm not doing this full-time so unfortunately, there's not much time left for something else.

We're German so most of you won't understand the lyrics. That's also one of the reasons it's on a much smaller scale than you would expect.

It's really amazing how there is zero market for German music in the US. Germany is something like the 3rd biggest market for music after the US and Japan. If you go to a big store like Amoeba in LA/SF they will have a huge section for France, Italy, etc. They will even stock folk CD's from places like Bulgaria, but the German selection is incredibly small (almost nothing contemporary). Amazon, etc., is better, but not by much. In the past I have had to order from Amazon.de.

I once tried to set up a German language station on Pandora, but it proved impossible.

I imagine that if you wanted to break into the US market as a German group you would need to sing in English with American accents and not advertise that you're from Germany (unfortunately). Scorpions, etc.

I'm curious. Are you GEMA members? Do you have to pay them to give away your tracks?

Good question. As far as I know, you always have to pay the GEMA when you put tracks registered with the GEMA on your website, free or not.

Good stuff. Loved the nonsense english song especially. Being able to understand the words sure helps, even if half of the lyrics are nonsense.

One thing that strikes me is that your recording sound is very "live." You don't include any instruments other than your three and use minimal effects. Is this an intentional choice to stay true to the live show? Adding a few extras that don't fit into the live show might be really effective--especially dubbing in some vocal harmonies.

That said, I think you're doing great. Just bought the one song you have on itunes.

The "nonsense song" was recorded by ourselves during a rehearsal so it's pretty much just the three of us. On our first album, there are many more additional instruments, background vocals, and overdubs. That was when we were with SonyBMG. Our producers wanted to get that commercial radio sound (which didn't help much in retrospect, it was still too rough for German radio - go figure).

Our fans often say it's too much and they'd rather like the raw sound of our live concerts. I think the next album will be a lot more like that. (Still more than just three tracks, though.)

That makes sense. It's probably a case of focusing on what you're best at, rather than trying to fit into someone else's mold.

E.g. we get lots of requests from dummers for our songs without the drum tracks so they could play along.

What do you play? Could you just convince him that yall should release a series of tracks each dropping one instrument? Maybe only the drummers will buy.

Instead of releasing the tracks without drums, you should release the mixdowns of each instrument individually. You could even charge a few bucks for it.

Let fans play their own instruments, re-mix, and upload. Have a contest for the best interpretation.

Doing it for all the tracks might help offset your drummer's aversion to the idea.

my suggestion - put together a new band - to be your project band - so that you can do what you want - plus, it gets you out of the rut of playing the same stuff again and again :)

My girlfriend is a musician and my one wish from the startup community working in the music scene is to kill both "management" and the bookies.

If anybody is working on democratizing event organization, marketing and ticket sales, you have our full support, participation and feedback. Ask away and I/she will tell you.

I'm not an expert, but these things come to mind:

Tickets: http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/002975.php http://www.ticketleap.com/

Organisation & Marketing: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/ Public Google Calendar Your blog & your website

You should check out Martin Atkin's book "Tour Smart." It should be mandatory reading for anyone involved in live music in just about any capacity. Seriously, a really, really good read, something I wish I had when I was still gigging.

There's a local (to me) startup called ShowClix that's trying to do some cool things with ticketing.

http://www.showclix.com/

try Derek Sivers' http://sivers.org/muckwork and to push your music extra-fast to iTunes for FREE, try WaTunes (disclaimer, used to be their evangelist), for physical distro - go cdbaby.com

"Remove all Flash from your website. Remove all stupid intros and load-times. MAKE IT SIMPLE TO NAVIGATE AND EASY TO FIND AND HEAR MUSIC (but don't autoplay)"

Brilliant. All websites should adhere to this advice.

I despise autoplay anything. It's the Internet not Television.

I don't agree with the "Remove all flash from your website suggestion". If you look at Pandora, Lala.com, Amazon, YouTube. They all use swf format as an easy way to deliver the music and video.

It's not without drawbacks however, but you will have a good idea of what the users experience will be when they recieve the media. It is probably not a bad idea to have multiple ways of viewing the media IMHO. With the user having the option to get the file itself alongside the sandbox be it Flash, Java , etc.

I don't think the Iphone supports flash right now though.

I'm pretty sure he's referring to Flash as navigation. Leaving Flash in to play songs makes perfect sense, but having those ridiculous all-flash front pages and navigation "flash app" is retarded and should rightly be abolished.

His advice on - giving music out for free at un-DRMed format in exchange for email - and using the email address to sell premium goods such as signed personal items..etc

sounds remarkably like the advice in the Seth godin's "Permission Marketting" book.

As a NIN customer, I can attest this works.

I have always been a fan of NIN, but not enough of one to check the website and keep up with tours and stuff. I'd occassionally catch a show and generally found out about new albums through my friends.

Then one of my friends pointed me to the Ghosts release, which I could buy online, DRM-free, for $5. I thought this was the greatest thing, so of course I bought it.

Then I started getting emails from Trent whenever they released something new or posted new tour dates. The emails were decidedly uncommercial... just plain text, as if he was emailing a group of friends. It's easy to dismiss other weekly emails (ahem Amazon and Borders) because of all the fancy graphics and marketing, but the NIN emails were both infrequent, personal, and very relevant.

So far, these emails have led me to buy The Slip, Niggy Tardust, the new Street Sweeper Social Club album, and attend two concerts. I'm definitely more involved as a fan, and love being told when things are happening, rather than having to follow the band's website.

I think the trick is not to overdo it. I think most people look at marketing as an activity that has to be constant... a daily/weekly barrage of offers, deals, and news. That's a quick way to get me to unsubscribe. But when I get an email every couple months from Trent telling me a new album is up for $5 (or more if you want signatures and stuff), or new tour dates are posted, I'm glad to know.

" The role of an independent musician these days requires a mastery of first hand use of these tools. If you don't get it - find someone who does to do this for you."

Opportunity to be had being the "someone" who does this for artists?

Easily summed up as the the opposite of what the rest of the music industry is doing with an emphasis on being realistic all the way.

I'm still wondering how much more time it will take before the realize they are on the wrong track and reverses on their actions and listens to their actual customers.

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