The Tale Of Two Nine Inch Nails Masters

Here's an except from a story I posted on Forbes that looks at the strategy behind the dual master release of the latest Nine Inch Nails album. Keep in mind that it's written for an audience that's not audio sophisticated.

"Don't look now but Trent Reznor has done it again. Always ahead of the pack in some way, Reznor just took a stand in the the so-called loudness wars by releasing the new Nine Inch Nails album, Hesitation Marks, with two different masters; the standard compressed-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life master, and a less compressed "audiophile" version.

For those of you not aware of the battleground, the loudness wars are basically a result of the insecurity of record execs, artists, producers and audio engineers everywhere that if their song is played right before or after another that’s louder, the listener will somehow deem it inferior. As a result, there’s a constant battle that rages behind the scenes in mastering facilities everywhere in an effort to make every song sound as loud as possible, even to the point where a mastering engineer (the specialized boffin who puts the final audio sheen on a song mix) will get the job based on being able to make the song louder than a competitor.

This is a battle that’s been raging since the 50s, and has resulted in mastering engineers usually violating their own collective good taste and judgement in making songs as loud as possible just to keep working. After all, lose a loudness shoot-out to a competitor and you might not get chance at the next record that needs mastering." Read the entire article on Forbes.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating social media and the new music business.

Follow Me On Forbes

I'm pleased to announce that I'm now contributing to Forbes online, analyzing the new music business. The first post is "Trent Reznor Changes The Paradigm Again," which you might enjoy.

This means that there will be some changes over on the Music 3.0 blog from this point on, in that the focus there will now be more on social media and how it effects the music business. The more music industry focused stories will appear on the Forbes blog site.

I invite you to follow me over at Forbes.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating social media and the new music business.

10 Major Milestones In Modern Music Marketing

Bruce Houghton wrote a nice post on his ever entertaining Hypebot blog today about the 10 major milestones in modern music marketing. It's hard to argue with any of these, and they all are certainly milestones in some way, shape or form. I've added my comments in italics afterwards where appropriate.

In no particular order:

1. Seth Godin writes "Permission Marketing" way back in 1999 pointing the way towards a new era of artist and fan relationships. I personally thought that his book "Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us" is more of the milestone, but Permission Marketing certainly ranks right up there.

2. CD Baby offers indie and d.i.y. artists a home to reach a wider audience on the net.

3. The Arctic Monkeys parlay internet pre-release buzz into the fastest selling debut album in UK history.

4. OK GO proves the power of YouTube with an ultra-low budget "treadmill" video "Here We Go Again."

5. TuneCore tears down the last barriers to distribution offering low flat fee no strings attached access to the worlds top digital stores.

6. Radiohead releases "In Rainbows" asking fans to pay want they want for the download.

7. Trent Reznor grosses $1.6 million in first week sales by offering fans options from $5 to a $300 limited edition package of his latest Nine Inch Nails release "Ghosts". Whether it's calculated or just an inherent feel for Internet marketing, Trent is the master and deserves to be on any top 10 list.

8. Jill Sobule asks fans for help recording her new album raises more than $80,000. Pretty good considering she was only looking for $75k and could've raised more had she not cut the offering off.

9. David Byrne & Brian Eno release a new collaboration via Topspin. While more evolutionary than revolutionary, this was one of the first well planned and executed releases that took full advantage of modern music marketing techniques with impressive results.

10. Amanda Palmer made $19,000 in 10 hours on Twitter proving the music marketing potantial of micro-blogging platform. I wonder about this one. Seems a bit fishy somehow.

Prince's Purple iPod Package Is Selling..........A Little

Prince's $2100 Opus One purple iPod and book collection has sold about 1/3rd of the 950 over the weekend. I guess that's OK, considering the price, but it's not like there was a run on these things.

But according to the British company that's actually doing the sales and marketing, Kraken Opus, they couldn't be happier.

I’m ecstatic about that,” founder and CEO Karl Fowler said. “Without being overly confident or too arrogant about it, we always knew that we would get to a sellout position within a few months.” To sell at this rate, however, was unexpected, he said.

It's pretty audacious to price any musical item at such a high price during these economic times, but the Purple One seems to be oblivious to the market at the moment. Even though it's obviously the brainchild of Fowler, all this paints Prince in a pretty bad light. Instead of being a brilliant example of Music 3.0 marketing like Trent Reznor, Josh Freese or Radiohead, it just feels like someone so full of himself that he feels that everything he puts out is worth the extra cost.

I'm sure Prince and Fowler will sell these packages out, but he sure isn't helping Prince endear himself to his fan base with this one.

Prince's $2100 Tour Book And iPod

After the news that the Grateful Dead is making a tour book available from blurb.com and even picking up the custom cover charge for their fans for a limited time, we find that the kind-hearted Prince will make available his "21 Nights Opus Package for a mere $2100."

The tour book is leather bound in a velvet case and the 280 pages are made of 200gsm silk engraved with metallic gold. The box set also contains a custom purple iPod loaded with 40 minutes of "exclusive" footage along with a live soundtrack from Indigo Nights and preloaded with a variety of Prince songs. Only 950 will be available.

If $2100 is not rich enough for you, you can also participate in a private auction for Number One in the series, which comes with a special alligator binding and an iPod encrusted with 5 "rare purple diamonds" and 21 "round brilliant cut diamonds."

Sounds opulent and ostentatious, but that's just me. I actually have no objections to these kinds of offerings aimed at superfans, as long as the rest of your fans are also taken care of, which I'm not so sure Prince did in this case.

I'm sure Prince will sell this package out in no time and good for him, but it just feels a bit smarmy as compared to similar offerings from Trent Reznor and Josh Freese. It seems that some artists are all about their fans while others are all about themselves.

Trent Rezor Does It Again

If you read this blog you know that Trent Reznor is frequently featured here for one reason or another and that's because he's on the cutting edge of the use of social media in music.

From excellent marketing with cutting edge sales incentives to intelligent and useful communication with his tribe (his fans) to viral marketing through flash drives, Trent's been there before anyone else.

Now he's once more broken the mold with the release of his new Nine Inch Nails (NIN) iPhone app. Just the fact that he's developed one is news, but the fact that it's both useful and easy to use is even bigger news.

Here's a video that explains it.

Secondary Ticketing

A dirty industry secret has recently come out into the open that may change the way concert tickets are sold.

It's always been curious that all the best seats in the house were gone even to the first standing in line at the box office. For many years, it's always been assumed that the ticket brokers and scalpers used their influence for these tickets, and while that might be partially true, the true reason has finally come to light. The acts themselves are given those tickets, who then sell them to the ticket brokers for a far higher price that the face value of the ticket.

The revelation all came in the wake of a major blowup by Bruce Springsteen in recent weeks. Instead of being able to simply purchase a ticket to see the Boss, fans were bumped to the secondary TicketsNow.com - even though comparable tickets were available on the mainline Ticketmaster.com. Springsteen wanted nothing to do with the practice, and immediately shouted down the scheme. Unfortunately, plenty of artists gladly participate, to the detriment of their fans.

Nine Inch Nails alter-ego Trent Reznor recently reaffirmed the dirty dealings in a blog post.

"The venue, the promoter, the ticketing agency and often the artist camp (artist, management and agent) take tickets from the pool of available seats and feed them directly to the re-seller (which from this point on will be referred to by their true name: SCALPER). There is money to be made and they feel they should participate in it."

Fans are tired of paying inflated prices far above the face value of the ticket, and in this economy, they'll soon be forced to act. We should see some tours with lots of unsold seats this summer.

Buy A CD, Get A Trapeze Lesson

Josh Freese, drummer for Nine Inch Nails, Devo, A Perfect Circle, Sting, and the Vandals, has taken a page out of the Trent Reznor (his boss in NIN) playbook with a unique multi-price strategy for his new album Since 1972.

With prices from $7 to $75,000 (that's right - no misprint), there's literally something for everyone, although you have to wonder just how serious some of the more expensive offerings really are. Makes for good copy though.

The full list with all the price points, is below:

JOSH FREESE: Since 1972
$7
-Digital Download of "Since 1972" (including 3 videos)

$15
-CD/DVD Double Disc Set
-Digital Download

$50
-CD/DVD Double Disc Set
-T-shirt
-"Thank You" phone call from Josh for buying Since 1972. You can tell him what you like about the record that you purchased, or what you thought sucked. Ask whatever you want, like "Is Maynard really THAT weird?" or "Which one of Sting's mansions has the comfiest beds?" or "Are Devo really Suburban Robots that monitor reality or just a bunch of Dads from Ohio?" or "Why don't the Vandals play more stuff off the first record?" It's your 5 minutes to yack it up. Talk about whatever you want.

$250 (limited edition of 25)
-Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
-T-shirt
-Signed Drum Head and Drumsticks.
-Go on a lunch date with Josh to PF Changs or The Cheesecake Factory (whatever you're into.)

$500 (limited edition of 15)
-Signed CD/DVD and digital download
-T-shirt
-Signed Cymbal and sticks
-Meet Josh in Venice, CA and go floating together in a Sensory deprivation tank (filmed and posted on youtube)
-Dinner at Sizzler (get your $8.99 Steak and "all you can eat" Shrimp on)

$1,000 (limited edition of 10)
-Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
-T-shirt
-Signed Cymbal, Drum head and Drumsticks.
-Josh washes your car OR does your laundry....or you can wash his car.
-Have dinner with Josh aboard the "Queen Mary" in Long Beach, CA
-Get drunk and cut each other's hair in the parking lot of the Long Beach courthouse (filmed and posted on youtube of course)

$2,500 (limited edition of 5)
-Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
-Get a private drum lesson with Josh or for all you non-drummers have him give you a back and foot massage (couples welcome)
-Pick any 1 member of the Vandals or DEVO (subject to availability) to accompany you and Josh to either the Hollywood Wax Museum or the lunch buffet at the "Spearmint Rhino"
-Signed DW snare drum.
-Take 3 items of your choice out of his closet (first come, first serve)
-Change diapers and make bottles with him for an afternoon (after hitting the strip club)

$5,000 (limited edition of 3)
-Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
-T-shirt
-Josh writes about a song about you and make available on iTunes.
-Co-direct a video with him for the song about you and throw it up on the youtubes.
-Josh gives you and a friend a private tour of Disneyland
-Get drunk together. If you don't drink we can go to my Dads place and hang out under the "Tuba tree"
-Stone from Pearl Jam will send you a letter telling you about his favorite song on "Since 1972"

$10,000 (limited edition of 1)
-Signed CD/DVD and digital download
-T-shirt
-Signed DW snare drum from A Perfect Circle's 2003 tour.
-Josh gives you a private drum lesson OR his and hers foot/back massage (couples welcome, discreet parking)
-Twiggy from Manson's band and Josh take you and a guest to Roscoe's Chicken n' Waffle in Long Beach for dinner.
-Josh takes you and guest to "Club 33" (the super-duper exclusive and private restaurant at Disneyland located above the Pirates Of The Caribbean) and then hit a couple rides afterwards (preferably the Tiki Room, Haunted Mansion and The Tower Of Terror)
-At the end of the day at Disneyland drive away in Josh's Volvo station wagon. It's all yours....take it. Just drop him off on your way home though please.

$20,000 (limited edition of 1)
-Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
-T-shirt
-A signed drum from the 2008 Nine Inch Nails tour.
-Maynard James Keenan, Mark from Devo and Josh take you miniature golfing and then drop you off on the side of the freeway (all filmed and posted on youtube)
-Josh gives you a tour of Long Beach. See his first apartment, the coffee shop on 2nd St where his buddy paid Dave Grohl $40 to rip up tile just weeks before joining "Nirvana." See the old Vandals rehearsal spot, the liquor store he got busted using a Fake I.D. at when he was 17 (it was Dave from the Vandals old ID). Go check out Snoop Dogg's high- school. For an extra 50 bucks see where Tom and Adrian from No Doubt live. For another $25 he'll show ya where Eric from NOFX and Brooks from Bad Religion get their hair cut.
-Spend the night aboard the Queen Mary and take the "Ghosts And Legends" tour. (separate rooms...no spooning.)
-Josh writes 2 songs about you and it's made available on iTUnes and appears on his next record (you can sing back up on em, clap, play the drums, triangle, whatever....)
-Drum lesson OR foot and back massage (once again...couples welcome and discreet parking available)
-Pick any 3 items out of Josh's closet.

$75,000 (limited edition of 1)
-Signed CD/DVD and digital download
-T-shirt
-Go on tour with Josh for a few days.
-Have Josh write, record and release a 5 song EP about you and your life story.
-Take home any of his drumsets (only one but you can choose which one.)
-Take shrooms and cruise Hollywood in Danny from TOOL's Lamborgini OR play quarters and then hop on the Ouija board for a while.
-Josh will join your band for a month...play shows, record, party with groupies, etc....
-If you don't have a band he'll be your personal assistant for a month (4 day work weeks, 10 am to 4 pm)
-Take a limo down to Tijuana and he'll show you how it's done (what that means exactly we can't legally get into here)
-If you don't live in Southern California (but are a US resident) he'll come to you and be your personal assistant/cabana boy for 2 weeks.
-Take a flying trapeze lesson with Josh and Robin from NIN, go back to Robins place afterwards and his wife will make you raw lasagna.