NIN Fans Caught in the Web

Nine Inch Nails have recently redefined the concept album, creating a conceptual game for fans prior to the album's release that incorporates the Internet to promote the album in ways that have never been seen before. Their latest Year Zero has yet to be released, but has already built a cult following of fans who decode mysterious messages at various cryptic websites and decipher clues about the dystopia world of “Year Zero” (which followers have revealed is actually 2022, or the year that the evil “presence”is Born Again).The basis for the game first began with a tour t-shirt, seen at the left.

The bolded letters on the back of the t-shirt spell out the clause “i am trying to believe”. iamtryingtobelieve.com is a website which begins to explain what the world will be like at Year Zero. Click here for a more specific description of the eccentric world of Year Zero from Rolling Stone.

The initial website has sparked dozens of fan websites, blogs and message boards with different ideas about what all the various clues mean. You can visit one of the more popular sites here.

The clues are deciphered over these websites through followers alone, and then discussed and analyzed at great lengths via the Internet. Additional clues have been added into the mix, through USB flash drives that have been found on the floor in bathroom stalls at various NIN concerts. The USB drives have included three leaked album tracks (download the first single for free, My Violent Heart ), various pictures seen only through use of a spectrograph (a machine that converts a sound wave into an image), and Morse codes at the end of the leaked tracks that point to new websites where they can try to discover more clues.

The latest website revealed just a few days ago is called Art is Resistance, which claims that the only way to resist this dystopia from becoming reality is through promotion of the album art so that we can find new clues and halt the process of Year Zero from becoming reality. Fans can download AIM icons, desktop wallpapers and printable stickers in order to fight the Year Zero world.

So what if a fan doesn't have Internet access? Bolded numbers on the back of another t-shirt are 310-295-1040 which is a U.S. phone number that directs callers to a puzzling message with clues and clips from NIN songs.

There are so many reasons why this marketing ploy is so genius. I am not a NIN fan, but I found myself browsing the websites , trying to figure out exactly what this was all about. This reveals to me that by creating a mysterious phenomenon around the album, they are able to spark interest outside of their normal fans (so that the entire online community will be interested). They have used merchandise such as t-shirts as tools for clues to feed their story (so that more people want to purchase merchandise). They use concerts as a venue to release the latest clues to the story (so that more people will want to buy tickets to their tour). They have released tracks one by one online and allowed free sharing of these tracks, allowing even those who weren’t NIN fans to sample their tunes (perhaps making new fans). They offer free downloadable icons, posters and stickers so that anyone can market their album in the non-digital world. And I don’t doubt that when their album is finally released, they will sell a higher percentage of physical albums as opposed to digital albums, as consumers will be interested in obtaining the extras and the clues that may come with the tangible CD. In an era when the purchasing a physical copy of the record itself is dying, NIN are using the Internet as a tool to market their records, their merchandise and their tour. Remarkable how using the Internet has NIN fans caught in the Web, and I can't imagine that the hype surrounding this marketing ploy will help NIN in all aspects of thier latest release.