Formula to Success

I found Mike Masnick's presentation very interesting. He raised some very interesting points on how success can be organic and self produced. Trent Reznor from 9 inched nails made an example of the music industry and record labels by carry on achieving success in his band and developing further profits when he was dropped by his record label. He came up with a formula for success, connect with fans + a reason to buy = $$$$. He gave a reason to his fans to buy his products by interacting with them and creating various medias in which the fans could get involved in. he connected with his fans by giving them options. For example he gave out the first 9 tracks of the album ghost 1 -4 for free and sold the rest of the tracks for &5 but you have to download the first 9 for free. By doing this, it gets more people to listen to his music and to listen a wider range of his songs. He also came up with an idea of creating the cd of of the album to change colour when it was heated up by a cd player. This encouraged fans to go out and buy a hard coy of the album itself. He also had had limited edition albums with posters album artwork. Live footage of the band and a documentary disc that was sold at a higher price than the other albums. Taking it a step further trent Raznor came up with a concept of bring out a limited edition extreme deluxe album. Only 2500 of these albums were created and they were all signed personally by trent Raznor himself. The album incuded much more exclusive content such as unreleased lyrics and footage. These albums were all sold out within the first 30m hours of the release at a price of $300, earning a total revenue of 750,000 within 30 hours. 9Inch nail concerts were also soaking up profit to the band. There shows were a musical concert as well as a visual theatre of entertainment. Trent razor also connected through to his fans via forums and social media. He set up locations of where he had place free tickets to a 9 inch nail concert. He also organised warm up acts that would attract fans to his concerts as well.