How Nine Inch Nails is Adapting to a New Music Industry

The massive marketing project for Nine Inch Nails' new album, Year Zero has gotten a lot   of   attention. And well it should. The marketing company, 42 Entertainment has created a huge puzzle—a treasure hunt of sorts—for fans to solve. The puzzle involves T-shirts with hidden messages, a number of thought-provoking websites, and carefully planted USB drives containing leaked tracks, clues, and images.

Tool's albums are more than just song files on a CD.

The iTunes store has changed the way people consume music. Customers are no longer forced to buy an entire album of music to get those one or two great tracks they heard on the radio because songs can be purchased individually. Some artists such as Tool have rebelled against this model, claiming that their albums are meant to be a complete package. Tool's latest album, 10,000 days, was packaged with stereoscopic artwork which continued their tradition of making the most of the "album experience." Other albums have featured layered artwork on transparent pages and lenticular images that shift when viewed from different angles.

Reznor has taken the "album experience" a step further. Not only are the songs a part of a unified album, the album is a part of an even larger experience which includes this massive puzzle. The puzzle has an underlying theme consistent with the songs, just like Tool's album art reflects their music. In the new playing field it takes more than another catchy song to keep the attention of fans. People have access to a seemingly endless supply of music and Nine Inch Nails is providing them with something new.

CDs that Do More than Play Songs

The physical Year Zero album isn't just a medium for getting music inside people's ears. In fact, the tracks are offered freely from the Nine Inch Nails website anyway. Nobody needs to buy the CD to get access to the music. However, people are buying the album because it comes with things that aren't on the website and can't be pirated. For instance, the CD packaging displays a warning mimicking Parental Advisory Labels but this one is from the Bureau of Morality—a government department that is part of the story of Year Zero. The CD itself has a heat-sensitive material which causes the disk to turn from black to white when it's played. This transition reveals a secret message which leads the curious customer to a website, exterminal.net.

The heat-sensitive Year Zero disc turns white when played and slowly returns to its original, dark colour.

Fans attend concerts to see a show, not just to hear the same thing their iPod plays. Similarly, people are buying albums because they are looking for something more than the tracks available on iTunes.

Getting Fans Involved

Consumers are no longer passive and the marketing for Year Zero has met them with a huge interactive experience. People are working together to uncover clues and scouring websites to find the next URL. The release of several tracks in Garage Band format, enabling fans to create remixes of tracks from Year Zero, also creates another avenue for interaction.

Nine Inch Nails has sided with the public against a common enemy (the RIAA), strengthened their fan-base, and given people a reason to buy their album despite the trend to the contrary. It's good to see that somebody in the industry seems to know what they're doing.