nin, the slip, and tailoring your product to multiple consumer profiles.

Recently, Nine Inch Nails released yet another album, The Slip, online, for free. This was, for me, enough information to start speculating as to the strategy that Trent Reznor is going for. Frankly, if he's doing what I think he's doing, he's not just dedicated to figuring out a better way to sell music online, he's actively looking at how the online space fits into the greater business of music, including touring, promotions, etc.

Ghosts, which I wrote about at length, was released about two months ago. By any reasonable analysis, it was a product for true fans - instrumental, sprawling, beautiful and haunting, but without a single to drive it, or potential for much radio play, or even a great likelihood that an individual track would stand out, rather than the entire record being considered a singular experience.

NIN has enough of a true fan base that projects such as this will make money - knowing this, it was released in many forms, allowing real fans to spend as much as they wanted to a) support the band, and b) get a physical object at the same time as the instant gratification digital download. While nothing is piracy proof, pretty much the only people who were deeply interested in Ghosts already cared about the band. No one heard it on the radio and ran to the Pirate Bay for a copy.

Ghosts was an album for the real remaining market for albums. People who love the band, the album experience, and the cachet that comes with ownership and status as a real supporter.

After my copy of Ghosts arrived in the mail, about a week ago, I received an email from the NIN Store, informing me of tour dates, and tickets going on sale (as well as early chances to buy, for the 'true fan' faithful who purchased Ghosts).

The Slip is a more mainstream product. It's a rockier album, less sprawling, with lyrics, pounding beats, and radio play potential. It's a mainstream product. As such, it's prime piracy fodder - it will be publicized, popularized, and spread far faster and wider than Ghosts ever could have been.

I have a lot of trouble believing this didn't factor heavily into the decision to release it for free.

There will be a physical release later, to satisfy the 'trufans', and capitalize again on the segment of the market that buys albums, but think of the promotional potential. For the trufans, The Slip is a preview of what they'll see at the show they were just granted early ticket buying opportunities for. For everyone else, it's a reminder that the guys who made Year Zero are touring again, and this is what you will hear.

The release of The Slip is, in my mind, an admission that mainstream records are a promotional tool for ancillary goods, such as concert tickets and merch. They still have value to the dedicated trufan population as an individual product, and will be marketed to them as such, capitalizing on that loyalty. But now downloads aren't considered lost revenue, or theft. It's an expansion of the promotional process, one that uses the tools of the revolutionaries. (The larger versions of the record are downloaded via bittorrent.)

Therefore:

• If this is the reasoning / structure behind this release, recordings are both a promotional tool for the casual, and a product to the faithful, while diminishing neither.
• This option likely increases the potential for income related to the tour, and later release of the record (although that is a guess, educated or otherwise).
• The trufan population is rewarded with little enhancements like physical product, and early ticket sales, thereby granting them the special status that keeps them coming back, along with an innate sense of superiority.
• Trent Wins.

It doesn't hurt that The Slip is another great record, artfully packaged for the medium of it's release, with details like different album art for each song.

This is how you deal with change. You adapt your business model not to the differences in distribution, but instead to the differences in consumer behaviour and interests that those changes have enabled and created.