What if you simply organized a few people? What if you took the remarkable idea you have, and instead of going out with intentions of marketing to the masses, you focused on the extremists-your biggest fans? What if you simply empowered these people to do your marketing for you? If instead of putting all your focus on ways to get new fans, deciding how your fans will be fans, and how to convince more people to buy your music instead of trading it for free, you focused only on the fans who care about you the most? The fans who will buy your music no matter what. The fans whose lifestyle is built around your music-empowering them-giving them control. Giving them everything they need to promote you. What if you gave your biggest fans the privilege to be a leader who organizes others around your music, converting them to the lifestyle?

Why would anyone do this? Why would anyone put forth the effort organize a group of people around your music without getting paid, or necessarily getting any recognition? Because to them it is a privilege. Just like it’s a privilege for Mac geeks to build a website all about Mac rumors, NIN fans to participate in the band’s online remix community, or for German car enthusiasts to create a message board where they can meet and talk about their cars. You and I do this everyday within the communities we’re privileged to be a part of.

One of the communities I’m privileged to be a part of is one that organizes itself around the ideas Seth Godin shares, and as usual Seth himself articulates this idea of “empowering others to spread your message” best. [Seth Godin on the tribes we lead.]

What action can you take in your career in music to position yourself so that your biggest fans are empowered with the privilege of organizing others? What do you think would happen if you gave them this privilege?

I have been posting a lot more than usual lately. This is party because there is more to talk about, and partly because I’m contemplating increasing the frequency of my posts. It’s kind of a hard decision to make. On one hand I feel that I would be stretching myself way too thin, as I have so much going on right now. On the other hand, I feel that if I stick to my current schedule, which is to post every Monday, that I miss out on talking about a lot of things because they are no longer current. I feel I would be doing my blog and my audience a disservice if I tried to post too often, and the quality of my blog suffered. In any case I wanted to talk about something now, and not wait another four days, as I feel it won’t be as relevant then.

Nine Inch Nails has been coming up with some awesome ideas to connect with their audience. They recently have released a collection titled Ghosts, with different options for downloading or buying physical copies. Now they are taking the Ghosts project and enhancing it by doing a collaboration with their fans through YouTube. It’s really inspiring to me, and I plan to copy some of their ideas. Check out Trent Reznor’s latest blog post [www.nin.com]