Take Shrooms with Josh Freese (and get his album)

While the record labels struggle to figure out how to make money selling music that is increasingly freely available, the actual artists making the music have figured out that the real value to fans extends way beyond what they can load onto their iPod.

Josh Freese, a wunderkind drummer of The Vandals, Devo, NIN and a host of other bands, has released a solo album and put together an impressive lineup of ways his fans can both support and interact directly with him.  From $50 for a five-minute phonecall to $75,000 to have Josh join your band, take drugs with you and basically rock your world.

Here is the whole list of offerings (via):

$7

• Digital download of Since 1972, including 3 videos

$15

• CD/DVD double-disc set
• Digital download

$50

• CD/DVD double-disc set
• T-shirt
• “Thank you” phone call from Josh for buying Since 1972. You can tell him what you like about the record that you purchased, or what you thought sucked. Ask whatever you want, like “Is Maynard really THAT weird?” or “Which one of Sting’s mansions has the comfiest beds?” or “Are Devo really suburban robots that monitor reality or just a bunch of dads from Ohio?” or “Why don’t the Vandals play more stuff off the first record?” It’s your 5 minutes to yack it up. Talk about whatever you want.

$250 (limited edition of 25)

• Signed CD/DVD and digital download
• T-shirt
• Signed drum head and drumsticks
• Go on a lunch date with Josh to PF Changs or The Cheesecake Factory (whatever you’re into)

$500 (limited edition of 15)

• Signed CD/DVD and digital download
• T-shirt
• Signed cymbal and sticks
• Meet Josh in Venice, Calif., and go floating together in a sensory-deprivation tank (to be filmed and posted on YouTube)
• Dinner at Sizzler (get your $8.99 steak and “all you can eat” shrimp on)

$1,000 (limited edition of 10)

• Signed CD/DVD and digital download
• T-shirt
• Signed cymbal, drum head and drumsticks
• Josh washes your car OR does your laundry … or you can wash his car
• Have dinner with Josh aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach, Calif.
• Get drunk and cut each other’s hair in the parking lot of the Long Beach courthouse (filmed and posted on YouTube, of course)

$2,500 (limited edition of 5)

• Signed CD/DVD and digital download
• Get a private drum lesson with Josh, or for all you non-drummers, have him give you a back and foot massage (couples welcome)
• Pick any 1 member of the Vandals or Devo (subject to availability) to accompany you and Josh to either the Hollywood Wax Museum or the lunch buffet at the Spearmint Rhino
• Signed DW snare drum
• Take 3 items of your choice out of his closet (first come, first serve)
• Change diapers and make bottles with him for an afternoon (after hitting the strip club)

$5,000 (limited edition of 3)

• Signed CD/DVD and digital download
• T-shirt
• Josh writes a song about you and makes it available on iTunes
• Co-direct a video with him for the song about you and throw it up on the YouTubes
• Josh gives you and a friend a private tour of Disneyland
• Get drunk together. If you don’t drink, we can go to my dad’s place and hang out under the “Tuba tree”
• Stone Gossard from Pearl Jam will send you a letter telling you about his favorite song on Since 1972

$10,000 (limited edition of 1)

• Signed CD/DVD and digital download
• T-shirt
• Signed DW snare drum from A Perfect Circle’s 2003 tour
• Josh gives you a private drum lesson OR his and hers foot/back massage (couples welcome, discreet parking)
• Twiggy from Marilyn Manson’s band and Josh take you and a guest to Roscoe’s Chicken ‘n’ Waffles in Long Beach for dinner
• Josh takes you and a guest to Club 33 (the super-duper exclusive and private restaurant at Disneyland located above Pirates of the Caribbean) and then hit a couple rides afterward (preferably the Tiki Room, the Haunted Mansion and Tower of Terror)
• At the end of the day at Disneyland, drive away in Josh’s Volvo station wagon. It’s all yours … take it. Just drop him off on your way home, though, please.

$20,000 (limited edition of 1)

• Signed CD/DVD and digital download
• T-shirt
• A signed drum from the 2008 Nine Inch Nails tour
• Maynard James Keenan, Mark Mothersbaugh from Devo and Josh take you miniature golfing and then drop you off on the side of the freeway (all filmed and posted on YouTube)
• Josh gives you a tour of Long Beach. See his first apartment, the coffee shop on 2nd Street where his buddy paid Dave Grohl $40 to rip up tile just weeks before joining Nirvana. See the old Vandals rehearsal spot, the liquor store he got busted at using a Fake ID when he was 17 (it was Dave from the Vandals’ old ID). Go check out Snoop Dogg’s high school. For an extra 50 bucks see where Tom and Adrian from No Doubt live. For another $25 he’ll show ya where Eric from NOFX and Brooks from Bad Religion get their hair cut.
• Spend the night aboard the Queen Mary and take the “Ghosts and Legends” tour. (Separate rooms … no spooning.)
• Josh writes 2 songs about you and both are made available on iTunes and appear on his next record (you can sing back up on ‘em, clap, play the drums, triangle, whatever)
• Drum lesson OR foot and back massage (once again … couples welcome and discreet parking available)
• Pick any 3 items out of Josh’s closet

$75,000 (limited edition of 1)

• Signed CD/DVD and digital download
• T-shirt
• Go on tour with Josh for a few days
• Have Josh write, record and release a 5-song EP about you and your life story
• Take home any of his drum sets (only one, but you can choose which one)
• Take shrooms and cruise Hollywood in Danny from Tool’s Lamborghini OR play quarters and then hop on the Ouija board for a while
• Josh will join your band for a month … play shows, record, party with groupies, etc.
• If you don’t have a band he’ll be your personal assistant for a month (4-day work weeks, 10 am to 4 pm)
• Take a limo down to Tijuana and he’ll show you how it’s done (what that means exactly we can’t legally get into here)
• If you don’t live in Southern California (but are a U.S. resident) he’ll come to you and be your personal assistant/cabana boy for 2 weeks
• Take a flying trapeze lesson with Josh and Robin from NIN, go back to Robins place afterwards and his wife will make you raw lasagna

If Josh sells out of his “limited edition” offerings he will bank $156,250 – not bad for a first solo album…

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NIN Pirate Booty

Well, the numbers are already rolling in on the Nine Inch Nails self-release and things are looking pretty good.

BoingBoing: “it only took the band two days to exceed the typical net from a massive-selling traditional CD release. The band sold $750,000 worth of “limited edition deluxe sets,” plus an unknowable further sum from sales of the regular CDs and merch.”

And both TechDirt and Mike Linksaver draw a correlation between the NIN success and Kevin Kelly’s “1000 True Fans” concept.

Mike: “The ultra deluxe success seems to me to validate the encouragement by some to pursue large revenue from rabid fans and collectors willing and able to pay for personalization, authenticity, embodiment, etc., rather than attempting to suppress zero cost distribution to the masses.”

TD: “It’s an excellent framework for any content creator getting started. Certainly, you may not be able to build up enough True Fans if the content isn’t good enough (or unique enough, in some cases), but you’re certainly unlikely to be able to build up those True Fans from scratch by keeping your content locked up and hoping that someone important “discovers” you and makes you a star”

Nine Inch Nails Gives it Away

Nine Inch Nails is following in the footsteps of a growing number of bands that have left the traditional world of labels and is self-distributing their own work.

In addition, they are offering fans the chance to download their basic album in for free, without any DRM.   As PaidContent points out, though, that’s just the beginning:

” — $5 download: All 36 tracks in a variety of digital formats, plus a 40-page PDF.
– $10 two-disc set: A double-disc set, packaged in a Digipak with a 16-page booklet, to be shipped on April 8. Includes immediate download of album.
– $75 deluxe edition: Ghosts I-IV in a “hardcover fabric slipcase containing two audio CDs, one data DVD with all tracks in multi-track format, and a Blu-Ray disc of Ghosts I-IV. Ships May 1. Includes immediate download of album.
– $300 “ultra-deluxe limited edition package”: Deluxe edition plus a four-LP set on 180-gram vinyl, which is packaged in a fabric slipcase. Two limited-edition Giclee prints are included; package is numbered and signed by Trent Reznor. Limited to a run of 2500, and one piece per customer. Ships May 1 and includes immediate download.”

This is definitely beginning to be a seriously interesting marketplace with so many bands exploring alternatives to traditional distribution and monetization methods.  It will be neat to see if they release reliable sales data so everyone can learn from their experiment.

As Mashable notes:

“Let me just stop here for a second and say that personally, I haven’t listened to NiN much since the Downward Spiral phase, but if there’s one album I’m gonna buy this year (I usually go to concerts and buy t-shirts, as I feel the band profits more directly from this; I have quite a collection), it’s going to be this one. Finally, you get good value for your money, and you get a fantastic number of options which cater to every pocket. I’m sure that fans will realize this and get the option they can afford, be it free, or the ultra-deluxe one.”