Audience Interaction: Nine Inch Nails

NB: the article contains strong language

Compared to the arguably cynical, hackneyed, overhyped apps, dripping with prompts to buy more merchandise, for Lady Gaga and Snoop Lion releases, this example of using websites, dropping USB sticks at gigs and suchlike is innovative and refreshing - and a source of ideas for any forward thinking promotion. Mark Beaumount details his groundbreaking Year Zero project:

He has explored the latest on-stage hardware and in-studio techniques and has been eager to use cyberspace to give his fans an all-encompassing multimedia experience. Its pinnacle was 2007's Year Zero project, an apocalyptic concept album about a futuristic US dystopia run by the military and populated by drug-controlled surveillance slaves. Initially, Year Zero sounded about as sci-fi as an Oyster card. Then fans began finding hidden website URLs imprinted into their promotional T-shirts and USB sticks of coded static left in toilets at NIN gigs. These clues led them to a labyrinth of websites for fictional organisations such as the Bureau of Morality and the First Evangelical Church of Plano, all part of an ultra-elaborate alternate reality game. For two months Year Zero lit up the web, turning from a cloak-and-dagger internet lark into a concerted effort to rally real-life political protest. Complete immersion.

Reznor has a track record for putting out some quite extreme promo clips, but also for looking beyond record labels for new digital forms of (self-)distribution: