Here is a great example of what Andrea Jarrell calls asking better questions.

Kevin Rose (Digg founder) had set up an interview with Trent Reznor, founder and frontman of Nine Inch Nails. Like the White House’s electronic town hall,the questions are raised and voted on ahead of time by the Digg community.

You could see Reznor’s initial skepticism, and he even hesitates at one point just before the interview begins . . . and finally acquiesces to go ahead.

Then he gets hit with the first question: “Your business model still primarily involves selling music either digitally or physically. Why haven’t you embraced advertising as a business model?” He pauses, and says, “I don’t usually get asked that.”

What ensues is an incredible, wide-ranging, deep, intelligent, strategic discussion about the place of the artist in today’s media world, along with concrete ideas for what today’s media landscape means for artists today: http://revision3.com/player-v2997
(Here is the link if the player doesn’t work above.)

He is in total charge of his brand, understands who it is for and what is best for it, and has useful, real world advice for others who want to negotiate today’s media world.

An example: At one point he compares Arcade Fire’s and Coldplay’s approaches to their digital presence. On the surface, they are similarly Internet darlings. But they actually have opposite strategies — one bottom up, the other top-down. (I won’t say which, watch the vid.) Trent shows he’s thought about this stuff deeply.

Andrea Jarrell asked me if I am waxing so enthusiastic because I was surprised that this rocker had anything of interest to say at all, or whether it was becuase he had good advice. Good question, and it made me think. It’s actually something else: I see this as a useful, concrete discussion of how to negotiate a brand in today’s environment. Other artists and personality-based figures can glean a thing or two from it.

You really ought to spend the 40 minutes and watch.

It is just an incredible interview and I have a new respect for Reznor — whose music I had already enjoyed but now I have a man-crush on his intellect.