NIN
Jeffrey Campagna:
Have you checked out Nine Inch Nails lately? Talk about a project that is more than a CD and more a piece of art. I spent about 4 hours the other night going from web site to webs site learning about something called Parepin and totally being hooked. I had to keep reading and reading going from website to website. Talk about a Viral marketing campaign. And how was it discovered? By hungry fans using the internet.
All I remember is David Letterman telling his audience he had to get that Nine Inch Nails on his television program. After their Woodstock ’94 appearance. You see there was BUZZ! But Trent Reznor wouldn’t take his troupe on TV. Even though Dave went on for weeks. That’s when I realized they were different.
Go to: Year Zero (album). Unless you’re in on the game, you’ll think it’s a joke. An elaborate marketing campaign that’s got nothing to do with "Saturday Night Live" and nothing to do with "The New York Times". It exists WHOLLY OUTSIDE THE SYSTEM! Like video games used to.
Think of all the money Trent is leaving on the table. All those kids who’d like to play!
FUCK ‘EM! Who needs them as fans! The cheerleaders and football players more interested in their social status at the high school than with what goes on inside.
Still, you know there’s a whispering campaign. On the campus. Both high school and college. And those who’ve graduated, they’re like Mr. Campagna above, surfing, IM’ing, e-mailing.
But it’s not only this elaborate game. Go to: NIN. Stunning that the site doesn’t take forever to load, like the Flash-overloaded pages of the wannabes, of the label hypes. And when you click on the splash page, you get to this index, that doesn’t look like your usual homepage, there are no pictures, they’re not trying to SELL YOU ANYTHING!
As a matter of fact, they’re giving something away. Click around and you’ll find GarageBand files, multitrack files of tracks that you can remix YOURSELF!
GarageBand? But what about WINDOWS USERS! Fuck Mac users. We get to them last. We don’t let people watch videos in QuickTime, there’s no COPY PROTECTION! But Trent knows it’s Mac users who more than e-mail and surf the Web, THEY’RE the ones with the built-in program that allows them to make music, to fuck with music.
There was some ink about the GarageBand files over a year back. But now, as the Web has developed, this new campaign Jeffrey Campagna is infatuated with is positively underground, it’s STEALTH!
NIN does not make easy music. Non-thinkers might believe they need a carpet bomb approach. So that they can reach EVERY potential NIN fan. But it’s not about making yourself ubiquitous, alienating your core, but ONLY SERVING YOUR CORE! And letting your core grow you.
Now my understanding is unlike the Arcade Fire dates, NIN shows are not cheap. But why should they be? They’re extravaganzas, people are willing to PAY! Just like you’re willing to pay to get into an exclusive club, an exclusive restaurant, buy a BMW.
How many years ago did NIN break? Certainly over a decade. But they can still sell out arenas. Jessica Simpson is in the tabloids and on the equivalent Websites seemingly every day, but she can’t sell a record and almost nobody wants to see her. Ten years from now? If she’s lucky she’ll have a TV career. Then again, can she read the cue cards?
