Nine Inch Nails Shows Every Other Band How to Make an Awesome iPhone App
Other bands might have been first, but Trent Reznor is about to blow them all way with NIN‘s coming iPhone app, which completely enshrines his place as the Highlander of musicians on the internet.
The apps looks like everything that Web 2.0 was promised to be for musicians, wrapped up in an incredibly slick package. The app seamlessly combines streaming music with custom playlists; a Twitter-like social network within Nine Inch Nail’s own network (that’s location-aware, so you can look up where messages came from in Google Earth on your desktop); fan-submitted images and media from every NIN concert ever (also location tagged); and of course, an iPhone-friendly version of the website within the app.
It sounds a lot like the future of music in a box, if you ask me. The reason he was able to build this, and you don’t see something like it coming from the mainstream industry, he says, is that "anyone who’s an executive at a record label does not understand what the internet is, how it works, how people use it, how fans and consumers interact – no idea."
The app will be free should go live in the next couple of days after it gets final approval from Apple. They’re already working on Version 2.0 for iPhone 3.0, which will include Google Maps integration and Push notification.
Also, if you didn’t know already, he’s on Twitter, and actually writes his own tweets, unlike some celebrities.
See the full article at Gizmodo.
Ticketmaster subpoenaed over reselling
Ticketmaster has been subpoenaed or received other requests for information from the U.S. Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission and the New Jersey Attorney General’s office, the company said in an email obtained by an industry blog.
The law enforcement agencies were interested in Ticketmaster’s relationship with its reseller TicketsNow, in particular controversial sales of tickets to Bruce Springsteen shows in New Jersey on May 21 and 23, said the email displayed on TicketNews.com.
"We have received a number of subpoenas and demands for sworn information about TicketsNow and its broker clients," Ticketmaster said in the email.
"These include formal requests for information and/or subpoenas from, among others, the United States Department of Justice, the New Jersey Attorney General’s office, the Federal Trade Commission and the Canadian Competition Bureau," the email said.
Ticketmaster confirmed the email was authentic but had no other comment.
Ticketmaster, which is seeking to merge with the world’s largest concert promoting company Live Nation, was besieged by complaints earlier this year when fans of Bruce Springsteen who signed on to Ticketmaster to buy concert tickets were told that they had sold out within minutes. They were instead directed to the reseller TicketsNow which had considerably more expensive tickets.
Read the full article at Yahoo News.
Last.fm Silences Third-Party Mobile Apps
Hot off an announcement that they’d be charging for radio access outside the US, UK and Germany, Last.fm has said that all non-official mobile clients will be banned. This isn’t going over well.
The change comes with a new developer API that will actually make things much easier for other developers, who’ve had to rely on a few undocumented calls up until now. Current licensing agreements with labels—who Last.fm is in no position to alienate—prohibit mobile streaming, though the company’s official mobile radio apps—right now just on the iPhone and Android—will still work fine.
As you could imagine, this kind of blows for a lot of people. Windows Mobile users will no longer be able to use Pocket Scrobbler, Symbian folks will have their beautiful baby, Mobbler, ripped from their hands, and BlackBerry owners will soon find FlipSide, a pay app, rendered silent. And as much as I’d like to, I don’t really believe that we’ll see official clients for any of the platforms, at least not soon.
Article source: Gizmodo.
Is Trent Reznor a digital-music visionary? Ask Lars Ulrich
Sure, rocker Trent Reznor’s example has encouraged plenty of music acts to reject the label system and search for a new industry paradigm using the Web.
Lars Ulrich suggests that Metallica may want to dump its label, and he wants Trent Reznor’s help to do it.
But did anyone expect that among Reznor’s disciples would be Lars Ulrich?
Ulrich, a member of the rock band Metallica and once one of the leading critics of peer-to-peer sites, said during an interview last week with The Los Angeles Times that Metallica no longer needs the backing of a big record company and suggested that the group may be ready to go independent.
"The primary–not the only, but the primary–function of a record label is to act as a bank," Ulrich told the Times. "When you’re fortunate enough to be successful and so on, you don’t need to rely on record companies as the banks…We’re doing a bunch of shows with Trent this summer in Europe. I look forward to sitting down and talking to him about what’s on his radar."
Because of Reznor and efforts by Radiohead, which also dropped its label and has since used the Internet to market itself directly to fans, Ulrich told the Times "there’s nothing but possibilities."
What’s the significance here? To many music fans Ulrich became the hated symbol of anti-innovation, anti-technology, and heavy-handed copyright owners when he was among those who tried to sue Napster–and indeed file sharing–out of existence.
Now, a decade later, even he wants to sit at the feet of Reznor.
Reznor, leader of the band Nine Inch Nails, has won accolades from digital-music fans for attempting to make music more affordable for the public while helping artists earn a living. He’s done this by rejecting the major-label system and distributing music via the Web directly to the public.
Ulrich’s nod to Reznor is, at the very least, an acknowledgment that digital distribution is here to stay and that the best way to survive as a music act is to understand it.
Original article: CNET News.
Bands often scalp tickets, says Nine Inch Nails’ Reznor
Performers often scalp tickets to their own performances, using TicketsNow.com and StubHub.com as outlets, says Nine Inch Nails founder Trent Reznor in a blog posting.
With the face value of tickets for the best seats so much less than what high rollers and avid fans are willing to pay, performers have to choose between letting scalpers reap the profits of their work or cashing in themselves, said industrial rocker Reznor in a blog posting on Sunday.
"The venue, the promoter, the ticketing agency and often the artist camp (artist, management and agent) take tickets from the pool of available seats and feed them directly to the re-seller," wrote Reznor, who has a long history of battling the music industry.
"I am not saying every one of the above entities all do this, nor am I saying they do it for all shows but this is a very common practice," wrote Reznor. "StubHub.com is an example of a re-seller/scalper. So is TicketsNow.com."
Reselling may disappear and the face value of tickets go up if U.S. Justice Department antitrust officials allow the planned merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation Inc, Reznor predicted.
See the full article at Yahoo News.
