Deadlines/Brief

Music videos are so 80s/90s, right? They belong with the era when MTV screened wall-to-wall vids instead of 'reality' TV? Try telling that to the millions who bought Gangnam Style; were they really simply loving the music? 1.6bn (and still climbing) have viewed the video on YT, not to mention the many re-makes (school eg, eg2), viral ads + celeb link-ups (even political protest in Seoul) - and it doesn't matter how legit it is, this nightmare for daydream Beliebers is making a lot of money, even from the parodies + dislikes. All this for a simple dance track that wouldn't have sounded out of place in 1990 ... but had a fun vid. This meme itself was soon displaced by the Harlem Shake. Music vids even cause diseases it seems!
This blog explores every aspect of this most postmodern of media formats, including other print-based promo tools used by the industry, its fast-changing nature, + how fans/audiences create/interact. Posts are primarily written with Media students/educators in mind. Please acknowledge the blog author if using any resources from this blog - Mr Dave Burrowes

Saturday 19 October 2013

Audience Interaction: Nine Inch Nails

NB: the article contains strong language
Compared to the arguably cynical, hackneyed, overhyped apps, dripping with prompts to buy more merchandise, for Lady Gaga and Snoop Lion releases, this example of using websites, dropping USB sticks at gigs and suchlike is innovative and refreshing - and a source of ideas for any forward thinking promotion. Mark Beaumount details his groundbreaking Year Zero project:
He has explored the latest on-stage hardware and in-studio techniques and has been eager to use cyberspace to give his fans an all-encompassing multimedia experience. Its pinnacle was 2007's Year Zero project, an apocalyptic concept album about a futuristic US dystopia run by the military and populated by drug-controlled surveillance slaves. Initially, Year Zero sounded about as sci-fi as an Oyster card. Then fans began finding hidden website URLs imprinted into their promotional T-shirts and USB sticks of coded static left in toilets at NIN gigs. These clues led them to a labyrinth of websites for fictional organisations such as the Bureau of Morality and the First Evangelical Church of Plano, all part of an ultra-elaborate alternate reality game. For two months Year Zero lit up the web, turning from a cloak-and-dagger internet lark into a concerted effort to rally real-life political protest. Complete immersion.

Reznor has a track record for putting out some quite extreme promo clips, but also for looking beyond record labels for new digital forms of (self-)distribution:

Reznor's mellowing extends to his visuals. The video for the album's first single, Came Back Haunted, directed by David Lynch, is a miasma of indistinct menace and sea-monster deformity, but practically Rastamouse in comparison with some of the early promos. "There was a phase where it was 'let's see how far we can take it'. We did a compilation of videos for the Broken EP, the second record we put out, and me and [video director] Peter Christopherson were talking about snuff films. He said: 'Why don't we tie these videos together with this narrative as if it was a real snuff film?' I didn't hear anything for a while and then an unmarked paper bag with a VHS video tape arrives in the mail … I love extremity, and I thought let's not make it look fake, but we both agreed not to put it out. I mean I'm living in the fuckin' Sharon Tate house, it's enough."
What was in it? "Y'know some penis dismemberment, the basic stuff."
If Reznor's interest in being rock's premier provocateur has waned, his hunger for new challenges and innovations certainly hasn't. He's become a virulent critic of major labels, ditching Interscope in 2007 to experiment with online DIY distribution, releasing free streaming and download packages of his two 2008 albums The Slip and Ghosts I-V. He talks at great length about a new streaming service called Daisy he's working on with Dr Dre's Beats and Interscope Geffen A&M chairman Jimmy Iovine, envisioning a more musician-friendly rival to Spotify ("There's a puzzle to solve in terms of what would be something that from a consumer's point of view brings joy and from a musician's point of view could put some cards back on the side of the table of the music content creator."). Yet Reznor has announced a truce with the industry of late by signing both How to Destroy Angels and NIN to Columbia. Why? "I found that when I was putting my own music out, with my Twitter feed as the pure marketing budget, I'm preaching to the choir," he says. "I'm trying to figure out how to keep my head above water."

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