If you haven’t yet read Trent Reznor’s open letter to rising artists, it’s worth a look. In advance of an ostensible farewell tour for Nine Inch Nails, the Prince of Pain imparted the young hopefuls treading his footsteps with some advice on what to do now that music is totally freaking free. And while we all know the music industry can barely be so called anymore, it’s heartening to hear it from somebody who is at—or near—the top, and believes in leaving the old business model for dead. It’s not an exhaustive guide, and the theories really aren’t all that radical. It’s just a suggestion to take a good, hard look at the writing on the wall, from a dude who’s been around the block. [UPDATE: Yeah, I'll mix metaphors all I want. Wanna fight about it? -- ed.]
Amongst Trent’s bullet points were a pair of websites I hadn’t heard of: Bandcamp and Soundcloud, each of which proposes a new and improved way of getting your music to the people, without the help of the mighty MySpace. Here are their intro videos—I warn you that the Bandcamp one sports some Apple-ad smarminess, and the voice-over on the Soundcloud one gets a little grating. But such trifles aside, both of these stand to be powerful tools for uncertain times.
BANDCAMP
SOUNDCLOUD
