Content Wants to Promote my Concerts: Nine Inch Nails Releases Free Album Online

The New York Times reports on the musical group Nine Inch Nails' new album which is available for free download via the Web. This is one of today's leading acts, so it's significant that they've moved beyond their own earlier experiments and experiments by Radiohead and other artists to nail down what is likely to be a standard formula for popular artists in years ahead. First comes the download, timed for maximizing enthusiasm for an associated event. The download comes with an offer to forward the download offer to friends, of course, so for free the band gets a network endorsing and promoting their work. Significantly there will be paid versions of this album in physical formats which will be available for the general market after the concert tour - a collectible, if you will, that any fans will want to have as a memento and that the general public will then tune into as the Content Nation enthused by the concerts and the downloads builds marketing momentum.

In other words, this group of artists is recognizing that content's primary value in media formats is to help people build valuable relationships. While there's money to be had in mass-produced intellectual property, the high-margin business in content is in person-to-person relationship building that results in both executed business and a more multi-dimensional relationship that can be leveraged in many more ways than mass manufacturing can manage. Thinking of "the big sombrero," our content market model in which much value is created in intimate audiences with a few "hits" being monetized on a mass basis, the role of mass media as we know it is changing. As events become the core of the music industry, for example, the mass-produced goods are finding their way into the "long tail" of the product lifecycle, souvenirs and by-products of a core group's highly profitable enthusiasm that peaks in events, the form that will ensure greatest long-term brand value and highest margins.

The other factor that promotes this pattern of monetization is the dearth of exposure that the typical song gets on commercial radio. With demographics and playlists at typical radio stations refined to a science that excludes much or any experimentation, it's very difficult for a music act to get exposure on limited radio outlets. By contrast, with downloads fans are free to build new music into their own iPod playlists, playing through their headsets or their car radios via inexpensive aftermarket or built-in connectors now available. The power of your music's brand endorsement value at its most valuable point in the marketing lifecycle is best spent on your own brand's value through improved personal relationships with your market. 

The Grateful Dead learned this lesson years ago, of course, by using a "sneakernet" of bootlegged albums produced by fans at their concerts with their open encouragement. The Dead's fan network helped to keep their concert brand value alive long after their music had faded from most radio playlists. But with the Web, musical acts can create enthusiasm amongst core fans even before a concert has occurred. Why bother with payola to radio station disc jockeys when you can have your fans endorsing and promoting your music for free? There will be time for radio playlists and secondary endorsed value for advertisers to exploit soon enough.

While the economics of such advanced content marketing are still being refined, indications from other media such as commercially published books made free online via eBook technology indicate that such distributions can increase the sale of mass-produced physical units significantly.
Content Nation is all about maximizing the value of relationships on multiple levels, which requires a far broader view of how those relationships will be valuable over time - not just for the brief moment in the mass-media spotlight that only a few products enjoy. Brands built through such efforts are more enduring, more remarketable and therefore far more valuable in the long run than the hit-or-miss efforts of most mass media content marketing.