Slashdot Mirror
Reznor Follows Radiohead, Offers Free Album
An anonymous reader writes "Convinced the current music business infrastructure (requiring artists to rely on labels) is broken, Nine Inch Nails front man, Trent Reznor, released his band's new album, Ghosts I — IV (Ghosts Volumes One though Four), on Sunday at 6 PM via his official site, marking yet another business experiment for this artist in the changing music market."
Gee, thanks for clearing that up. I thought it was some new direct injection content delivery method.
The team: Atticus Ross, Alan Moulder and myself with some help from Alessandro Cortini, Adrian Belew and Brian Viglione. Rob Sheridan collaborated with Artist in Residence (A+R) to create the accompanying visual and physical aesthetic.
We began improvising and let the music decide the direction. Eyes were closed, hands played instruments and it began. Within a matter of days it became clear we were on to something, and a lot of material began appearing. What we thought could be a five song EP became much more. I invited some friends over to join in and we all enjoyed the process of collaborating on this.
The end result is a wildly varied body of music that we're able to present to the world in ways the confines of a major record label would never have allowed - from a 100% DRM-free, high-quality download, to the most luxurious physical package we've ever created.
More volumes of Ghosts are likely to appear in the future.
- Trent Reznor, March 2, 2008 For those of you that don't like the same sounding music on an album or the yelling vocals, I heavily recommend downloading this and listening to it for free. I emphasized the "wildly varied" as some of this music is very cool calm and collected easy listening with very orchestral sounding builds.
I'm glad to see an artist as respected as Reznor do this. It kind of makes sense though, as you see this music only took him 10 weeks to do and doesn't have any vocals--lowering the number of takes and the difficulty of quality lyrics.
With the digital age and the ability to produce easily and quickly accessible DRM free music, we may see the beginning of a whole lot more material coming from artists with either an ad-based revenue or charging for particular tracks that required more studio time and refinement.
My work here is dung.
To clarify, only the first 9 songs are available for free. The rest are still available a price well below what you could get anywhere legal.
I can see this becoming a trend. Every headline about a band making millions in a matter of days by distributing their music online, is going to attract the attention of the other musicians. Eventually, they will catch on.
So what do you think will happen when more prominent artists start dropping the labels, realizing that they could make more money if they don't give 95% of their revenue away? I predict that the RIAA will tighten its grip, and try to work with Clearchannel to eliminate non-RIAA affiliated artists get in mass media (radio/TV). I don't think they are going to just sit around and let their cash cows drop out one-by-one.
In one community I hang out in (one full of musicians), a bunch of them get together each week and write a song on the spot, sometimes in an hour or so. They all work individually, and judge who came up with the best music. Looks like this fellow stumbled onto the same idea.
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Radiohead didn't come up with this idea. Harvey Danger did it back in 2005 and they probably aren't the first. Here's the Slashdot article:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/02/2056210
Anyway, this NIN album is very good. If you're anxious for it and the NIN servers are still too slow, Amazon's MP3 service has it for $5. Amazon finally released a Linux version of the downloader, btw.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
The summary's a bit off - I haven't read this article, but something I read earlier today said that there are several releases.
If I remember correctly:
1. The first part of the album (not the whole thing) is available as a free download.
2. The whole thing is available for download for $5.
3. A CD set is available (10-15ish?).
4. A deluxe, signed, and limited CD set is available ($75?).
So, yes, there is some music for free here, but it isn't the whole album, and this isn't exactly the same as Radiohead's release.
He's finally transformed into Henry Rollins, I always thought he was a skinny guy until I saw a recent photo.
Task Mangler
You should have seen the faces of the band!
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Funny that Trent should do it, he was a regular at a nightclub in Chicago over a decade ago that I was a part owner in, and used to scream about the record label monopoly even back then. Wonder if he ever remembers it...
I've helped a few bands over the years break free from relying on the distributor monopoly by providing their easily-copied material for free, while providing hard to copy material at great cost (or higher cost). Bands should make their big money by providing the hardest to mimic items at the higher cost, and the easy to mimic items at a lower cost.
The hardest to mimic? Playing live. This is where bands should make their money -- performing for fans. Those of us who are not musicians make our money, generally, by ongoing work. We don't get paid for previous work (often), we get paid for current and future work. Bands should be no different.
Trent has a unique set of prices on his site: $5 for a download, $10 for a CD+download, $300 for a CD, 180gram LPs, a DVD with 36 tracks of each song (to remix), and a giclee printbook. Great idea. The multitrack DVD idea I came up with many years ago for bands to release to fans to remix. David Crowder Band is one band that did this to great acclaim (and even released a few of his fans' remixes).
Trent is ahead of the game. I'm prebuying the $300 kit because I want to support Trent's ideas, music, and astounding insight into why the RIAA and other monopolists have no place in the new digital world. If it can be copied easily, the price should fall to near zero. If it can't be copied easily, the limited supply should dictate the price based on whatever the demand level is. Supply and demand, the most important aspect of a market economy.
This is NO experiment for Trent, this is his step into the correct version of the current music market. He doesn't need monopolized distribution from the RIAA, he has distribution. Even small bands are doing just fine distributing their music via iTunes, and touring, touring, touring. Selling t-shirts (which can be copied, but are a hassle to do a dozen cheaply), giving away hundreds of stickers for fans' cars (cheap), selling albums (LPs, impossibly expensive to duplicate), signing posters, and other options are a great way to provide a consistent income. Touring just 8 months a year, a few bands I've consulted with are already pushing nearly $50k per year per member in profit. Yes, it is hard work. Isn't what you're doing hard work, too?
Users couldn't figure out how to decrypt it until they figured out that the music was suppose to sound like that.
ok, bad joke. I've got a bad case of the Mondays.
I will definitely buy it just to support the cause. I am not a big fan of NIN but liked a couple of songs from their previous albums. Just my two cents
I am going to guess what you say will happen, and Internet radio will start to take off even more than it has already. Someone will need to find a way to get channels repeated over the airwaves so we can get this in our vehicles as well. I really don't care much for Trent anymore, and begun to dislike his music when Broken came out. But if he offers free albums, I'll gladly take a listen to see if he's making music I might like again and offer up some cash if I like it. If not, no loss for me or him.
Free: First 9 tracks $5: Download of 36 instrumental tracks, MP3 (320kbps), FLAC (CD Quality), and AAC for the fanbois (Choice of one only) $10: 2 CD boxed set, 16 page booklet (Available 8th APril) $75: Hard cover slipcase with 2 x CD's, 1 x DVD with $5 package, all formats, and Blu-Ray disc with all tracks in high-def audio with accompanying slideshow of album art. $300: NIN fanboi package. $75 package + (2500 only) 4 x Vinyl discs, 2 limited run posters, signed by Trent.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Offers multiple formats, and multi packages, and a free sampler (the free one which includes 9 tracks) so he can get a better idea of what's going on and also make money (the full download is 5 dollars).
A lot of people downloaded In Rainbows without paying because they didn't know or actually like radiohead, not just because they were free riders. Trent set the price low enough and provided enough options that he'll have a better idea of who likes his music and what they want -- people not familiar with him will sample and move on, but those that like the work will have to choose between waiting for bittorrent or paying a cheap 5$.
Finally, these bands are starting to figure it out. No, not the whole online distribution thing, but the how to do it well thing. I think this is the first offer I've seen like this where you can actually listen to it and sample without opting for the free download. Also, the pricing seems right. $5 for the download album is pretty respectible. However, $10 for the 2CD set makes it really tempting to get the actual CD.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
thanks a lot slashdot.
I've been trying to download the flac version of this album all night, and the servers are already struggling to keep up. now that the sites been slashdotted, im sure my download experience will be even better!
actually, i'm impressed, this website succumbed to the slashtod effect 5 hours before it even made the front page. this year zero style time displacement stuff hurts my brain!
-I only code in BASIC.-
Just in case anyone hasn't noticed, this album is just an instrumental album. No lyrics... I'm happy to see the ability to listen to some of the tracks before I decide to buy, but I don't think I'll be buying this one.
torrent the free sampler?
For quite some time, I have been asserting that when fans really like the product, they want to buy it in hard form so that they can look at it, read it and hold it in their hands.
I'm going to predict that while the "product sales" will not quite match the historical model's returns, the artists themselves will see a HUGE difference in their profits from this.
I'm hopeful that this represents a shift back to the way things SHOULD be where the copyright holders are the artists themselves and the promotions and marketing people are essentially just contractors.
I wonder if Reznor looked at the model for Doom / Quake and realized how fast it spread. I wonder if him and Carmack ever bounced the idea back and forth way back in the Quake days.
Anyhow, good show.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
its great to see an open format becoming the audio format of the future
Why, o why should the guys doing these kind of music the ones that embrace the new distribution methods? I ask this because I do not really like this kind of music. I was raised having to listen to bands like Nirvana (the only ones I liked), Pearl Jam, Silverchair, Thearpy?, NiN, Smashing Pumpkins and all that alternative/grunge (sorry if I do not know the *specific* genre) until I vomited because my older brother used to play it all day long. I myself prefer Metal of different sub-genres like heavy, speed, black, epic (gay Metal... if you count Rhapsody hehehe), and that kind of stuff... However so much for the "rebellious" nature of Metal... all the bands (the good bands at least) like getting screwed by the big corporations (not that they do not get anything back of course).
Oh well, I hope that this kind of actions serve as an example for other bands of other genres.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
He actually did torrent the free as in beer sampler (9 tracks). Please don't slashdot the site if you just want to check the sampler out.
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4059158/Nine_Inch_Nails_-_Ghosts_I_(2008)
The full 36 tracks are 5$. And are licensed under creativecommons for non-commercial copy/share/perform.
Trent Reznor already has some experience with this sort of delivery method. Saul Williams's The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust! was a semi-collaboration with Reznor.
Well if that happened, there would be no reason not to switch to Linux. People say they use Windows because it costs money and therefore has value, while Linux is given away and therefore is worthless.
Let's just hope Trent's servers are better than Radiohead's.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
"cool" I thought to myself, followed the promptly mailed download link, selected FLAC as format, kind of grunted when I saw the "one time download" notice, pressed the "OK" button
Reloading brought me promptly (as in : this is apparently the only page that isn't slashdotted) to a page stating that I had exceeded my download limit and was not entitled to download the files ~again~ (?!?)
A mail to their support is already on the way, but I'd advise everybody who wants to buy the album to wait a few days before doing so, to give them to sort out their many problems (for some of which I presume /. is actually one of the cause;)
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
..and sees income shrivel up and die as much as their reputation has with vista.
The difference is, nobody WANTS vista!
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
All I can say is... thank god for "wget -c". Their server room must be filling with smoke as I speak.
they tested this out last year with a free/5$ setup
interesting that they moved to sample/5$
Just a couple months ago he collaborated with Saul Williams on the NiggyTardust album (The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!) which was released for free or pay.
One of the primary complaints I had about online music sales (outside of the DRM limitations) was that they only offer a facility to sell the actual tracks; there's no way to bundle extras with the purchase (besides maybe a video, which the store also offers). The iTunes Music Store is especially guilty of this in that they are forcing the labels and artists to play by their rules. I really wish there was an online music store that not only offered DRM-free tracks, but also bundled artwork with them and offered the ability to order the physical CD, but download DRM-free tracks immediately so you don't need to wait for little (like $1) or no extra cost.
Looking at what NIN is offering, I feel that the price points are well set and I will be buying the $5 bundle. I'm tempted to buy the $10 bundle so I get physical CDs, but when 320kbps MP3s are available for $5, I question my need for physical media.
The availability of the PDF booklet and other art is spectacular and I really wish it was possible to get high-res album art more regularly with album purchases; even if they are just the cover. Some album covers are really nice (Pig Destroyer's "Phantom Limb" and Agoraphobic Nosebleeds "Beastial Machinery" to name just two.), and I wish I could purchase high resolution digital copies of the art with the albums.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
Radiohead set a good precident. Good for Trent,he's finally beginning to see the light. He used to be a hardliner for industry methods from all I've heard him say in the past.
,and robbed of its food source is dying. Oh well.
It doesn't take much thought to see that the music industry is dying like a dinosaur on a glacier. It hasn't adapted and because of the consensus of stockholders(who invest in stock in other industries that performs as per the safe usual) is needed for evolution,it will continue to reach for extinction.
P2P isn't so much the death of the industry as it's own corruption is. The information age is merely hastening it.People and artists are tired of artists being ripped off,chewed up and spat out in the name of marketing convenience.
Cyber-space has recursively proved what happens in meat-space; sound travels freely and longs to be free like information. You may be able to charge someone for labor done or the right to take up physical space in a venue, but music permeates not unlike the air we breath.That leaves revenues to be made from performance or product packaged for convenience.Slashdot recently featured an article on Kevin Kellys article on the necessary evolutionary changes needed for various I.P. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly08/kelly08_index.html
Of course with this the middleman (music industry and its mafiaa) is obsolete. This may leave some without a convenient career but in the words of Caddyshacks Judge Smales "Well,Danny,the world needs ditchdiggers too". Obviously,I have little sympathy for an industry that has smothered more talent than it's featured and force fed the public crap(think disco era assembly line production amongst even more modern crimes)in the name of marketing convenience for maximum profit.
Music is a living,breathing entity that manifests itself through musicians. As such it must honor the physical laws that govern us all: ADAPT OR DIE,being the relevant one in this case. It has, the music industry being a synthetic entity manifested by the ever shifting laws of commerce hasn't. Therefore it is like a parasite that music has evolved an immunity to
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
I'd like to see what happens when some business minded individual (such as Trent) decides to create a corporation and offer it up for an IPO to the public.
Basically the idea is to fund the production of each album using other people's money and then of course investors get to share it the proceeds.
The labels do this, why not the artists? Certainly there is a lot of legal overhead and a new set of laws and fiduciary duties to the shareholders, etc etc but that's a real business for you....
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Does he not realize that there are business models at stake here? Listen here, you little cockstain: you're our dancing monkey. You dance when we tell you to how we tell you to. We're not paying you peanuts, we're paying you peanut shells and you're going to yum them up, smack your lips and say "Please, sir, may I have some more!" You're going to do this or we'll fuck and chuck your sorry ass out the door and bring in some new wide-eyed innocent ten years younger and dumber than you and build them up to be the new you. You hear that, you shit, you worm, you groveling clown? You are a commodity, a consumable, something that is used up and replaced by an interchangeable part. You stand up to us and we'll pound your ass until you're shitting blood. This is our industry, our money, and you are nothing, nothing!!!
This message brought to you by the RIAA. Go out and buy something, you mindless sheep.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
He has also been influencing other bands (or at least one other artist that I know) to adopt this method. Saul Williams [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_williams] collaborated with Trent on his newest album The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust [http://niggytardust.com/saulwilliams/moreinfo], which was given away for free online, with the option to donate, of course.
Looks like Trent might have been testing the waters before he launched himself (so to speak), which might also be a testament to the viability of this method. If it didn't work at all for lesser known artist like Saul Williams, then I doubt Trent would be declaring this method 'the future.'
- John
unfortunately the economics of this (user time vs cash) is currently that it's more cost efficient AND less frustrating to grab the torrent because the distribution infrastructure /store isn't robust enough yet.
This is actually his second attempt at this process (did it with saul williams in Nov)
you're modding me down, but if you notice, the equivalent of what Radiohead and Reznor are doing has been further away from happening than it is today. It was a joke, yes, but still, there are some points worth comparing.
Onda Technology Institute
TFSummary (and TFA) leaves out the most important part about this news: that the album is free as in freedom, not just free as in beer. It's released under a creative commons license, which means that he (or the **AA) can't go after you if you share the album online. AFAIK, this is the first high-profile album release under a CC license (I don't believe Radiohead's was under a CC license).
I don't think it's being offered as 'free'...it's being made freely available on his website and hopefully people will pay up voluntarily.
The interesting thing about this is not only did they just released it for free, but it looks like there might have been a bit of a legal issue in which Radiohead issued a cease and desist to the group. From the article http://www.prefixmag.com/news/radiohead-amplive-remix-in-rainbows-download-ava/17248/:
It almost would appear that Radiohead was acting under some kind of open music philosophy, where they are allowing alteration to their free album with neither AmpLive nor Radiohead directly profiting from the alteration. But I'm obviously just speculation as to what happened...
Album is available for download from here: http://www.onesevensevensix.com/amplive/index.html
- John
It's a little late, but here's the official site. I clicked the link to the article, and most of my browser window was an ad. I had to scroll down to even scan (not read) TFA. Lame.
This is a great model, and I see no reason it can't succeed. Offer the music, take what you can get, reap all of the profits. All you have are musical production costs. No CD's, or shipping or packaging. Just music. A lot of people will contend that if a small band did this, they wouldn't make anything. Bull, if they're good, word of mouth (or word of keyboard, as it were) will spread. A market like this will quickly reach equilibrium.
"Teach a man to build a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life."
Spoke too soon... I was up to 10mB, but now zero progress. I give up for now.
I am a bit of a NIN fan...
I went to the site, paid $16.99 for an immediate download of all 36 tracks and the promise of the 2-disc CD set mailed to me in April. The download site is totally swamped. I tried to download the music, my downloads would just die before I even got a few percent of the archive. I tried again, then again, and now it hates me: "download limit exceeded." Hopefully, they'll get their shit together, unblock my access, and I'll be able to get the music I paid for.
The moral of this story is: "You might want to wait a couple days before trying to download."
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
He did this with Saul Williams' CD late last year (that he produced), it was the same as the Radiohead thing except there were only two options - free and 5 dollars, and no discs or anything physical was available. The numbers he later provided, like 20-30k people paid out of 150k. When he released those numbers he said something along the lines of he didn't make much of a profit if any because he recorded and mixed it professionally. I think this suggests that maybe smaller guys without built in fanbases don't have what it takes to do this business model successfully. I think the touring comment was good though, as anyone who liked the music will probably go to a show (i'm planning to go to a SW show). Not to say that the riaa's model works, just something in between will probably work better for them. I mean, if everyone actually did follow this business model... Well, does anyone really want to see a band like nickelback or daughtry get millions of dollars for anything, let alone the music they make?
..been extremely rocky. His experience with TVT, especially, was pretty terrible - to the point where he worked with one of the mastering engineers to sneak two 'secret' tracks onto the original release of Broken, since the album's producer said 'no' to them. It's been said before: the fact that he's made enough money to continue producing his own music (and the music of artists he respects), then distributing it himself, is the reason this works. Same with Radiohead. He can make his own publicity due to his fanbase (full disclosure: I'm a member of that fanbase). On top of that, he's got good instincts for marketing and hype. I will third the recommendation that you download the first 9 tracks; they will convince you to immediately surrender $5 for the other 27. It is very, very good stuff. -Matt
:\ Can't even download with my 100mbit dreamhost account.
I've tried downloading this several times and the server keeps giving up before the download completes. So far, I have some wallpaper. Can everyone else please stop trying to download so I can finish this, then I'll let you all know when I'm done so you can resume? Thanks!
One thing the summary doesn't mention is that the album is also available in torrents -- posted by official profiles on The Pirate Bay, What, and Waffles. We knew Mr. Reznor had been an Oink member, and it's encouraging to see he did not scatter with the roaches when the monopolists shut that site down.
I just wish I could get the LP for less than $300!
Unfortunately what works for Radiohead isn't necessarily going to work for other musicians.
This was an often heard comment after Radiohead did it.
You update it to:
Unfortunately what works for Radiohead and NIN isn't necessarily going to work for other musicians.
Next band:
Unfortunately what works for Radiohead and NIN and Band X isn't necessarily going to work for other musicians.
Give it a couple of years and your comment will be marked informative for being the definitive list of every musician still active.
Do yourselve a favor, don't copy & past the same lousy comment from the radiohead thread and just insert the various band names, sooner or later you are going to look pretty silly.
Oh and giving your music away for free is nothing new, new bands do it all the time, in fact I still got a tape that my mother got from Peter Blanker (dutch artist, not that famous himself but wrote a lot of lyrics for others), specially 'mixed' to have his adult songs on one side and kids songs on the other.
A friend of mine is into alternative music, REALLY alternative, think music where they burn 10 cd's and 9 go to the "press" and the rest to the fan (yes I spelled it correctly). The difference here is that TWO big sellers have decided that this new method makes more sense for them.
Oh and as for it getting stale, tell the porn industry when they launch yet another starlet. The consumer is an ever hungry beast. There can never be enough new content out there.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"Nine Inch Nails front man, Trent Reznor, released his band's new album"
You should have seen the faces of the band!
The bandmembers' names are Ghosts I - IV.
Why should an artist need the type of publicity afforded by the RIAA anyway? That model is out-of-date. If, as the grandparent describes, all artists were to cut the umbilical cord with the RIAA and move over to indepdent distribution, this would create an entirely new market place.
Suddenly, an artist's popularity is no longer based on how much radio airtime or how good their marketing is. Instead, we would see this give rise to a system where the artist's popularity is actually determined by the music fans (what a concept :p). The artists with the highest ratings or the most downloads would become the most popular.
Once the new market place replaces the current one, I think you will find the playing ground will be more level for the known and unknown artists alike. There will no longer be a third party entity trying to shape the music market to generate the most revenue for themselves. I am glad to see bands like Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead pushing this forward. It will be very interesting to watch it all unfold.
We'll make great pets
I listened to it. If Trent has an elevator in his home, this is probably what plays in it. Or if you were taking an elevator ride down to Heck it might be playing in that elevator. If you like dark music, it's better than instrumental versions of the carpenters but it's no March of the Pigs.
I'm picturing him working on this music with a pirated copy of Reason on his laptop while he's waiting on a flight or something.
How is Amazon DRM laden? I've purchased a few hundred $$$ worth since they launched. I downloaded to my home server, and I can play the resulting files on anything i have.
But this isn't even the first time Trent Reznor did this; he worked with Saul Williams on the Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust, and they gave it away for free in 192 kbps format with a $5 download for 320 or FLAC. It's a great record too, download it yourself and see! They sold over 150,000 downloads at $5 a pop and then Trent took down the freebie link and posted to his blog whining that it wasn't enough, but they recently put it back up. The Ghosts announcement is good news alongside this fact, because it means that he still believes in alternative distribution channels (and free music) despite his earlier whining.
http://www.dgmlive.com/
The price was up to the person downloading the album, it wasn't "free" unless someone decided to not pay anything to the band for the download.
Not everyone downloaded it for free.
I'm a 2000 man.
Click the link in my sig, download my tracks (sheet music too, if you play piano), and drop them in your shared folder. You'll really be helping me out - my hope is that by doing this, I will already be well-known when the time comes to play professionally.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
The problem with the music industry is cost and profit margin expectation. Unlike professional sports, in music there are "amateurs" that put out a product every bit as good or better than that of the major labels. There will always be a handful of performers that transcend the rest from each generation and become rich, and that won't change, but for everybody else...record your album for $10,000 (or less) instead of $100,000 (or more), stay in cheaper hotels when you tour (or maybe a bus is cheaper, I don't know). Make sure your first contract is good, which might mean you don't get quite the signing bonus or promotional weight you might expect, but carries less risk for financial ruin if you don't make it.
Money and rewarding experiences are still out there for musicians to obtain. But the days of easy money by signing a deal and selling 2 million CD's are over. You're going to have to work harder, operate more efficiently, and be better, with a more innovative business model. In other words, the music industry has caught up with the rest of the business world.
#1: making your money from touring does not mean that your album making beings to suck. examine the opposite: you could say that the era of deriving your money from albums means that tours sucked. excpet no one really says that, because, like what you are proposing, that fact does not logically follow
#2: this is the direction things are going anyways. so, let's say, for the sake of argument, you are correct about albums sucking due to bands getting their cash from touring. ok. does that fact actually reverse the change of business model? doe sit actually compel a change in behavior? no
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It will be abused...
An Artist creating and distributing their content the way The Artist deems appropriate. Some for free, some you have to pay for and it is up to The Artist as to which selections are which.
Now The Artist has bills to pay, kids to feed or whatever and they need money for that. Where this will more then likely fall apart is when someone someone decides that they are going to make a decision to buy the titles that are not free for download and then post them on Pirate Bay or some other torrent site, and then The Artist is not going to make as much $profit$ to be able to pay the bills, feed their kids or whatever and this will bring The Artists business model to a screeching halt, and then its back to the nasty old record companies because they, contrary to popular myth, actually pay people for their work.
So all you folks who think that if they but ONE copy of a creative work they have the right to distribute it any way they please, you are the ones with the power to destroy what could be a great thing, so whats it going to be? Respect The Artists rights or are you just going to say, "Who fucking cares, I have a computer and an Internet connection and everyone will think I am cool by taking someones hard work and distributing it without any kind of permission ( I am pretty sure that their is an agreement one must click on prior to purchase that explicitly prohibits such actions ) at all!
I really really hope I am wrong, but somehow I have the sneaking suspicion that I am not, and thats a damn shame.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
If you like rap or Reznor, or are just in the mood for something different, it's worth the price of the download. Hell, the chorus of the title track might be enough to make the download worthwhile:
Overall it's a smart and catchy offering, if slightly uneven at times.
Your brain is not a computer.
Then you don't even have go looking to find those new artists. You'll just assemble a musical profile, and whenever some artist anywhere in the world release his music - it will get tagged and matched with your peers and slowly work its way into your personal radio channel.
That is what the music industry is fearing, and what will indeed kill them. Very soon, artists will just plug their masterpieces into the net, and after a while their music will have played for thousands of people interested in just that kind of music. Why should you sell your future profits for marketing when you'll hit your key audience automagically, at zero cost?
Just make great music and drop it on the web. If an artist is good enough to become famous doing that, all that is needed is to think of a way to convert fame into money. But that's a lot easier than making great music.
This will be a network effect. Just wait for critical mass and enjoy the ride.
I lost my sig.
That indicates the whole thing is CC (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/), and that they acknowledge you can download it without paying, yet encourage you to throw them some cash.
Note that's what Radiohead did (minus the CC AFAIK).... "Here's the music, pay as you will"
This business model is turning out to be very successful. Whenever a band (Radiohead or NIN, so far) does this, though, there will be cynics here and elsewhere in the media who will say "what about when this becomes the norm, though? Will it still be profitable?"
The answer is yes. I think people feel good about rewarding artists with $5 when they love the music. Not to mention that if they spend $10 they get immediate satisfaction in the form of a download, plus something tangible (2 CD set, with a 16 page booklet) to look forward to in the mail. People feel good about that, and they always will for as long as people love and appreciate music.
Despite my answer to the question, I think the original question is irrelevant. Cynics ask it as if to suggest that if such a thing were to happen, artists wouldn't just stop doing this. If the model becomes unrewarding, the model dies. So far it is wildly successful. It will probably only become even more successful in future as people (and companies) become increasingly comfortable with small online payments.
The RIAA does appreciate the effort that the cynics are making, though. Too bad for both of them that this is the inevitable future.
The torrent for all 4 is already up and running at a decent speed.
I just ordered the 2x CD set, but I'm curious.... does it just assume I'm in the US when I order (and won't ship abroad), does it charge me for international shipping, =OR= will it ship from the UK when available in Europe? Any ideas, it didn't seem to make it very clear (I paid $23 overall)
"I write the songs that make the whole world sing."
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I'll be purchasing this just on principle. Even if I never listen to the music, the $5 to encourage other artists to give the finger to the MAFIAA, and release music in this direct to users style, is more than worth it.
Not since Pretty Hate Machine have I been so enthusiastic with Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails. I find his latest release an interesting, meandering, sometimes beautiful and occassionally grooving body of work. It's made me a fan again.
However...
there are two significant problems I see with this (and Radiohead's In Rainbows) otherwise brilliant execution of the freemium business model:
1. Radiohead's internet release of "In Rainbows" could've been a lot more lucrative for the band if their servers dolled out the files and accepted all the payments instead of quickly crawling into fetal position. The reality is many eager fans tried to pay Radiohead for their music (and symbolically give the bloated corpse of the traditional music market a bootheel in the ribs) but couldn't, because the website was felled by the massive demand. We're seeing the same tragic error perpetuated again with Ghost's, as fans attempt to pay via Paypal or some other mechanism and are rejected as if by the house of Mutombo. Whatever the cash intake for Ghosts ends up being (and I'm sure they will be amazing), it could've and should've been much more.
2. Ghosts(I) is good, but it's not great, and it's too short. More promising tracks reveal themselves when you listen to all four volumes (there are 36 tracks in all), but many people won't be able to make payment and download the complete Ghosts I-IV from the official website until tommorrow at the earliest. And if people forecast how good II through IV is based on what they heard on Ghosts I, they may not think it's worth downloading at all. My suggestion is arrange more listener-accessible tracks in volume one, and the more esoteric stuff as the premier content hardcore fans would pay for anyway.
Don't get me wrong. I think Trent scored bigtime with this internet launch/release, but I see these relatively easy problems throttling the possible revenue stream.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Uhh, his manager fucked him over. He trusted the guy and got burned, it's not because he's a bad businessman.
I can assure you it isn't. The free tracks can also be found on The Pirate Bay thanks to TR, and I am one of the lucky-ones to have the full albums downloaded in FLAC format. Once the server stops getting hammered... try again.
Uhm. Trusting people is being a bad businessman, in general - expect people in "business" to try to screw you over, they're all sociopaths civilised into fucking up people's lives instead of just murdering them and taking their shit.
Hmmm, if I download this music, will it be like buying a Sorny, Magnetbox, or a Phelps TV?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some idea balls to remove from a manatee tank.
I am a huge NIN Fan, bought more of their albums then anyone else's besides manson's.. anyways, a couple years ago, after I lost my second CD Case, with over 70 CD's (I am a irresponsible, ADD asshole) I swore off buying CD's for the most part. I went to download the free NIN album.. and decided it was less of hassle to just bittorrent the thing.. (it required registration, email exchange etc) that being said I support this distribution model, and will support it when possible.
FYI, Trent won the '93 Grammy for Best Metal Performance with "Wish" (Live / Video). The lights at the chorus are still one of my favorite parts of a NIN show. Closure Disc 2 has both the videos if you want to see them in high quality, and the Broken Movie is related too.
As of this morning, all 2,500 of the uber-deluxe $300 packages are sold out. That's obviously not all profit, but it's still pretty amazing.
"This is where bands should make their money -- performing for fans"
Why do you think you get to tell ANYONE how they "should" make their money? Who the fuck are you guy?
You're NO ONE. I'll make my money any way I choose, and you can keep your idiotic opinion of how I should do it to yourself.
And as opposed to the poor overloaded official site, the Ghosts I torrent is currently as fast as you can handle. I grabbed the 9 tracks in a matter of seconds. This is bittorrent at its best, 100% legal and 100% fast-as-hell, try it out!
Once the official site is healthy again you can go back and consider a payment option.
none of the big concert halls would let them perform if they weren't already with a major label.
I know nothing about EU business law, but wouldn't that kind of thing be a violation of Anti-competitive practice laws? They are locking bands out of purchasing the use of the concert venue, because they aren't buying services from the "right" people in the distribution market. Any business that refuses to sell you their product because you aren't buying a different product from an outside company(which they have had a longstanding profitable relationship with) has got to be violating some kind of business law.
We are all just people.
Ghosts I-IV may not be NIN's best effort - it may be a lot of morbid elevator music - but its revolutionary in a way I'm not really hearing people talk about. Reznor didn't just duplicate what Radiohead did. Ghosts' tiered pricing system extracts value from those who value NIN's music and accessories the most while helping to underwrite the participation of those less willing or able to pay - it is Ramsey pricing. Most revolutionary, however, is that the 75 dollar and 300 dollar packages - the latter of which Reznor sold out of in days - include open source .wav files for the music so users can remix the songs and create their own musical mashups. Further, Reznor has created a forum where users can post their remixes and he will lend his name to form a compilation of the best efforts. The DVD was one of the most successful consumer products ever because it allowed people greater participation with the content they love through behind the scenes features, interviews and other extras. The Music and Film industries have been struggling to find a way to provide similar platform specific value in the digital realm, where people can exchange exact carbon copies of a creative work with the click of a button for free (albeit illegally). The ability to not just interact with but collaborate with your favorite artists coupled with a tiered pricing system may be the answer.