The artist and the Internet

This was originally posted in Swedish, but since I was inspired by and am using quite a lot of the words of somebody who does not, to my knowledge, read Swedish I've decided to translate it and post it again:

The relationship between artist and fan is changing if you haven't noticed, along with the way we consume and experience music and even communicate since the internet arrived.

In the forum on the NIN homepage Trent Reznor, the voice of Nine Inch Nail, talks amongst other things about how the cultural landscape have changed, and still is changing today:

It's been an interesting experiment over the last couple of years or so. Faced with leaving the infrastructure of traditional record labels and figuring out what the right thing to do is in this new world - I found myself realizing that for me to have any concept of how to interact with the community and know what they might want / what they find appropriate, I need to immerse myself in that world and live it for a while.
The reason no record label knows how to market anything to new media is they don't live there. They don't get it because they don't use it. What you've seen happen with the marketing and presentation of NIN over the last years is a direct result of living next to you, listening to you, consuming with you and interacting with you. Directly. There's no handlers or PR people here, it's me and my guys - that's it. There's no real plan, even - it's just trying to do the right thing that respects you the fan, the music, and me the artist. That's the goal - a mutual and shared respect.

Not everybody chooses to follow the same path but it is my belief that the path chosen by NIN and many others is wisely chosen. It's better on so many levels to participate in this new thing, be a part of it and dealing with it from experience and insight rather than desperately hanging on to what no longer is, or even allowing some of all these self proclaimed experts or gurus take command.

Of course there's a price to pay for the intimacy this sort of interacting brings. The world is a huge place and here be all kinds of people, including the ones who may not always be able to grasp the concept of perspective. Reznor tells about people who are unable to fully distinguis between reality and imagination, about people who express anger and hateful feelings due to the fact that he's not the same man today as he was in 1994, and about people who attack the fact that he's in a relation and his girlfriend. Yet, he forgrounds, even if they are both intrusive and stubborn, and sometimes threatening and scary, the only a few of them.

Reznor with NIN, like many artists, writers, musicians etc have chosen to be part of the new social arena. They choose to communicate directly with fans all over the world and generously share both time and other things with their fans. They are rewarded with loyalty, attention and their works, records, books etc, are sold and bring pleasure to many. The artist who chooses to stay out of the arena may achieve some fame as a hermite but accepts the risk of ending up out in the cold, forgotten. Choosing between works from somebody who's generously shared his or her thoughts along the process, replied to questions etc, or the works by somebody one's never heard of most of is would choose the first one.

The world is not out of joint, it has changed. Artists have nothing to loose in getting of the high horses they cannot handle and instead follow in the path of Reznor and many others. It's not that dangerous, and it's worth it.