Your post reminds me of interesting fact has been pointed out by Geert Desager, Business Development Manager & Strategic Consultant at Tagora and blogger at Brandopia. And since I’m from the advertising and marketing department I really think I need to study this matter so as to avoid any future problems.

I like the idea, though. In fact, it might be a cheaper way of marketing even. But, it’s true that it wouldn’t work for the Backstreet Boys or some other group like that. It probably works best with bands like NIN which are all about going against the system and that kind of thing. I think most people from a Backstreet Boys concert (mostly girls, I hope) would hand the USB stick in at info instead of take it home! Or even know what it is, and rather just leave it there. Plus, what’s so secretive of the Backstreet Boys anyway? NIN has the right image.

I don’t even know if it would work for Madonna, even. It might... but i’m not so sure about that.

Very good marketing idea, thanks for that.

And thanks to whoever it was that posted the link to supergreg! That made me laugh!

This campaign fits the NIN image so it works.

After a bit of time out of the spot light, he’s very intelligently been able to use the internet as a means to bring NIN back into the minds of the right people. Not the mainstream, but rather the apex of the digital culture jammers.

By releasing his bed tracks into the public domain, he’s created LEGIONS of Bedroom DJ’s that are REMIXING his tracks all over the web, while as this post discusses he uses the web in a very smart and “present” way to gain attention in a “NON PUSHY” way, that makes you want to “play with him” in his world.

KUDOS to who I think is one of the most relevant artists of our time, and I do mean ARTIST and not musician as I feel that he’s transcended a single label and is using media itself as an artform.

Too bad he and Beck would likely never work together, they are two of the very few artists that I believe really understand the digital landscape and are using it effectively rather than hiding behind old processes.

The marketing campaign (is it a marketing campaign if they aren’t actually trying to sell you anything?) is fantastic. The story he’s trying to convey through the viral campaign and the album itself is a pretty bleak vision of what we’ve got to look forward to. Word has it that Trent, having said that the album is “the soundtrack to a movie that hasn’t been written”, has now in fact been approached to make the accompanying movie.

Unfortunately, I’m not as impressed with the music itself as I am with the virals/hype. C’est la vie!

In short he (a blogger and NiN fan) is writing, that he found one of those USB sticks on a concert. Happy as he was, he wanted to share it with other fans and so resampled it in low quality and offered it as a stream (not download) on his blog. A few days later he got a letter from a lawyer of Universal Music with a cease-and-desist-warning (I hope that’s the right English term), which costs him an estimated 500 EUR (he didn’t write the exact number, but that’s what you normally have to pay for similar cases.)

That’s the other side of this coin ehm interesting campaign.

lol