Below is a short piece I initially wrote to be made into an article hosted on one of the two leading Nine Inch Nails fansites but have had no luck in getting in contact with them.
I have posted the article as it was initially drafted below. Hope this satisfies my promises to those involved.
Reminder: This is just a bit of fun, not the most scientifically rigorous piece of work ever done. Regardless, it does raise some interesting points.
Enjoy.
Probing the personality of Nine Inch Nails fans
In a recent study exploring attitudes towards music piracy, PhD student Steven Brown (see http://ninarmy.com/home/reznor-and-the-internet-from-an-academic-perspective.html) recruited significant number of participants through the music websites Ateaseweb (a Radiohead fansite), Ninarmy and the Nine Inch Nails official website. As a thank you to those kind souls, he ran some additional statistical analysis, spawning some interesting results.
Note: The majority of the fans were from the two Nine Inch Nails fansites, with just a handful from the Radiohead fansite, hence the generalisation of NIN fans.
Under the assumption that the participants recruited from music forums could be considered ‘big fans’ (with a greater level of affinity with music to commit time to engaging with these websites) some interesting observations were raised in accounting for the habits, preferences and personalities of these individuals.
So called ‘big fans’ scored statistically higher mean scores on the scale used to measure attitudes towards music piracy (AMP-12) than those recruited from elsewhere, suggesting such fans using music forums are perhaps more likely to illegally download music than the rest of the sample.
These ‘big fans’ were also more likely to listen to live recordings of music, including of concerts they themselves have attended, more likely to listen to re-mastered versions of albums already owned and were more likely to prefer music in CD format (than digital or vinyl.) It is suggested that the implication of these participants’ increased familiarity and usage of the Internet that accounts for the trend in the results concerning attitudes towards music piracy and music consumption preferences.
Additionally, this sub-sample of participants also scored statistically lower on scores of extraversion and statistically higher on openness, as measured using the Hexaco 60‐item personality inventory. In other words, the personality profile of Nine Inch Nails fans could be argued as that of tech‐savvy introverts who are creative, unconventional and inquisitive.
Do you fit this profile or do you break the mould?
chaosintoorder 