Nine Inch Nails iPhone App Extends Reznor's Innovative Run | The Underwire from Wired.com

LOS ANGELES — Trent Reznor was backstage one afternoon last summer, fooling around with his iPhone to stave off boredom before a show, when he realized that fans standing in line outside were broadcasting photos from the scene using their iPhones.

So he took the obvious next step: Using Twinkle, the same Twitter app the fans were using, he started sending out photos from backstage. And so an idea was born.

"We started thinking, 'Hey, this could be pretty cool,'" Reznor recalls. A few days from now, the results should be up on Apple's App Store for anyone to use.

The free Nine Inch Nails app, scheduled for release as soon as it gets final approval from Apple, is a mobile window on all things NIN: music, photos, videos, message boards, even — thanks to a GPS-enabled feature called Nearby — the fans themselves.

Nearby is "kind of like Twitter within the Nine Inch Nails network," says Rob Sheridan, Reznor's long-time collaborator. "You can post a message or a photo by location, and if you're at a show you can see conversations between other people who are right there."

Fans have had their curiosity stoked by hints about the iPhone app that have shown up on Reznor's Twitter feed.

"We're all waiting for it," says Brandon Dusseau, a Milwaukee-based web designer who's one of the founders of NinWiki, one of the group's leading unofficial fan sites. "I'm sure it will get tons of downloads, and I'm hoping it will be a really cool resource. But all I know is, it's coming out soon."

In an exclusive interview at Reznor's home, a coolly modern structure high above the Westside region of Los Angeles, Reznor and Sheridan previewed the new app and explained how it fits in with their plans for survival in a post-label world.

via blog.wired.com

It's totally awesome how NIN 'get' technology. I hope more bands follow their lead.

Posted via web from vamsee's posterous