Grab the noise cancellation headphones Trent Reznor is preaching again

There are only two types of musician. Independent and owned. And once you have been owned, in any way shape or form, you can’t ever be independent again.

Trent Reznor is an owned artist who is trying to convince everyone, himself included, that he is independent.

Sorry Trent, it’s not that simple.

Recently, Trent has been preaching to everyone who will listen about his wonderful new business model, telling musicians to give away their music for free. And, whilst some of what he says is true, an awful lot of it is junk.

In order to explain I’ll quote Reznor and reply to each of his points in turn.

Forget thinking you are going to make any real money from record sales. Make your record cheaply (but great) and GIVE IT AWAY. As an artist you want as many people as possible to hear your work. Word of mouth is the only true marketing that matters….

Ok Trent, I’m with you so far. Just so long as you definition of GIVE IT AWAY is the removal of cost and not the wholesale passing of rights.

Parter with a TopSpin or similar or build your own website, but what you NEED to do is this – give your music away as high-quality DRM-free MP3s. Collect people’s email info in exchange (which means having the infrastructure to do so) and start building your database of potential customers. Then, offer a variety of premium packages for sale and make them limited editions / scarce goods. Base the price and amount available on what you think you can sell. Make the packages special – make them by hand, sign them, make them unique, make them something YOU would want to have as a fan…

Collect people’s email info in exchange for high quality DRM free MP3s. Fail. I thought you were giving away the music for free, not in return for an email address. It’s not 1998 anymore. People have woken up to email marketing. Asking people to trade their email address for a free tune will only send them running to try and find your music elsewhere. Or, worse still, running away to find someone elses music. Someone who doesn’t want their email address.

Making special packages by hand isn’t something that scales well. I currently sell plenty of albums. Some at a premium cost. I’m not going to limit my sales by having to hand craft everything. That completely negates one of the main benefits of digital distribution. Cost free duplication.

The point is this: music IS free whether you want to believe that or not. Every piece of music you can think of is available free right now a click away. This is a fact – it sucks as the musician BUT THAT’S THE WAY IT IS (for now). So… have the public get what they want FROM YOU instead of a torrent site and garner good will in the process (plus build your database)….

Wrong again.Music isn’t free. It takes time, and often real money to produce music. Don’t confuse free duplication with free production. Give it away for free, yes, but don’t be so disrespetful to the art that you think of it as free. In given your music away for free you are, presumably, hoping for some return in the form of attention. Don’t devalue any part of the equation or you won’t succeed.

Music is valuable. Attention is valuable. You will only succeed when you understand that and are happy to exchange one for the other.

Have your MySpace page, but get a site outside MySpace – it’s dying and reads as cheap / generic. 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). Constantly update your site with content – pictures, blogs, whatever. Give people a reason to return to your site all the time. Put up a bulletin board and start a community. Engage your fans (with caution!) Make cheap videos. Film yourself talking. Play shows. Make interesting things. Get a Twitter account. Be interesting. Be real. Submit your music to blogs that may be interested. NEVER CHASE TRENDS. Utilize the multitude of tools available to you for very little cost of any – Flickr / YouTube / Vimeo / SoundCloud / Twitter etc.

Myspace, seriously? If your music is on Myspace you’ve already failed. Myspace is a one way ticket to doom and obscurity. Get a blog and use it. Get a Twitter account and use it. Everything else will bleed your potential audience dry with ridiculous advertising.

If you don’t know anything about new media or how people communicate these days, none of this will work. 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. If you are waiting around for the phone to ring or that A & R guy to show up at your gig – good luck, you’re going to be waiting a while.

Agreed. Some common sense at last.

But if I think that Reznor has so many holes in his argument how come he is, apparently, making more money than ever?

Because he is owned.

Major label support made him famous and gave him the platform of publicity he now enjoys. The ideas that Reznor puts forward are as old as the hills in true independent circles. Real independent musicians have been using the free distribution model for years, many with great success.

Unfortunately Reznor is another Radiohead. Another example of the owned musicians turning and biting the hand that fed them in an attempt to jump off the sinking ship. They hope to persuade their fans that they hate the rampant greed that fed the major label machine, even though it also fed them.

It’s sad to see people getting taken in by this. If Reznor, or Radiohead, really wanted to be independent they would record new material under a new identity and promote it in a way that made it impossible to leverage their existing fame.

How far would they get without the mass coverage that their influential positions, positions that were given to them by the major record labels they now pretend to despise?

Only they can answer that. Want to be a real independent Trent? If your theories work, and most of them are sound, what’s stopping you?