After 20 years of existence and more than a full year on the road promoting their current album The Slip, Nine Inch Nails will play tonight their supposedly final show ever. Trent Reznor, the cover star of our quite possibly least popular issue so far, mono.kultur #03, has announced that he will still be releasing music but is retiring from the stage – anybody who has ever witnessed one of NIN’s bombastic testosterone-fuelled concerts that paved their way to success will be sad to see him retire in dignity.
But regardless what you might think of their music, there is always a lesson to be learnt: in the case of Nine Inch Nails, it is what a successful combination of a band and the internet could and should look like.
In 2007, NIN terminated their record contract and have since distributed all their music via their website, experimenting with various formats and exposing all numbers of sales. In addition, the website hosts not only the regular forums but also invites fans to upload their images and videos from the concerts, as well as offering – for free – the master tracks for the entire NIN back catalogue so that fans can create and upload their own remixes. Every day, literally hundreds of remixes are being posted and are available to listen to or download for free, generating the most lively and actively used band website we’ve ever come across. In short, for a music industry that is still focused on battling the new media rather than using them to its advantage, look no further: this is how it should be done.
