Trent Reznor gets in on pollster action

Last week, we jested about Kanye West focus-grouping his new single and making adjustments to it after a bit of a panning online. This morning, however, Soundboard awoke to a friendly e-mail from Trent Reznor, who had a few questions of his own about our Nine Inch Nails fandom habits:

I'm enjoying my couple of weeks off between legs of our Lights In The Sky tour and got to thinking... "wouldn't it be fun to send out a survey to everyone that's shown interest in NIN?" Well, that's not exactly how it went, but regardless -- here it is. As we've moved from the familiar world of record labels and BS into the unknown world of doing everything yourself, we've realized it would benefit us and our ability to interact with you if we knew more about what you want, what you like, what you look like naked, etc.

And thus we were directed to a survey with some pretty boilerplate questions about our preferred media outlets, music formats, social networking habits, propensity for illegal downloading, etc. This sort of survey isn't news to anyone who's bought a major label album since the dawn of the Internet Age, but it's notable to see a recently fully label-emancipated artist doing this kind of market research on his own. Reznor seems to both understand and genuinely care about how to best put his music out in the world in ways his fans want it, and as a carrot before the stick of the survey, he promises an exclusive NIN live video and a vague promise of "something like signed stuff, flying someone to a show somewhere in the world, a magic amulet that makes you invisible, a date with Jeordie White" to some lucky scamp in the future.

But like a dad who isn't mad, just disappointed in you, Reznor knows what you 4Chan types are up to:

I know what's going through your little minds right now: "I'll just grab this off a torrent site and not have to fill out the survey!!!" and guess what? You will be able to do just that and BEAT THE SYSTEM!!!! NIN=pwn3d!!!)

-- August Brown

NIN photo by Richard Hartog / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Leahane]

Thanks for the info on NIN/Trent!
La Times/soundboard your always up to date on things!

[Leahane]

Thanks for the info on NIN/Trent!
La Times/soundboard your always up to date on things!