Nine Inch Nails frontman and digital distribution pioneer Trent Reznor recently gave some of his thoughts on how unsigned bands should proceed in the digital era. The post was sparked by his positive comments on the Beastie Boys recent run of digital reissues, which led to to the frequent comment that "established artists" can easily give away or digitally distribute music while unknown artists do not have the name brand of a Radiohead or Nine Inch Nails to do so.

Trent responded saying:
Forget thinking you are going to make any real money from record sales. Make your record cheaply (but great) and GIVE IT AWAY. As an artist you want as many people as possible to hear your work. Word of mouth is the only true marketing that matters. What you NEED to do is this - give your music away as high-quality DRM-free MP3s. Collect people's email info in exchange (which means having the infrastructure to do so) and start building your database of potential customers. Then, offer a variety of premium packages for sale and make them limited editions / scarce goods.

Have a realistic idea of what you can expect to make from these and budget your recording appropriately. The point is this: music IS free whether you want to believe that or not. Every piece of music you can think of is available free right now a click away. This is a fact - it sucks as the musician BUT THAT'S THE WAY IT IS (for now).

Reznor gave away two albums in the past two years, Ghosts I-IV and The Slip. Despite this, the latter album brought in at least $1.5 million in revenue directly before being picked up for a physical release on CD.

Read the rest of the post here.