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NIN's Music Experiment Sells Big Numbers
An anonymous reader writes "It looks like Trent Reznor's new Nine Inch Nails album experiment is a success. Among the various options he gave fans, the most expensive was the $300 Limited Edition Ultra Deluxe Package. It took just over a day for that package to completely sell out, earning Reznor $750,000 in revenue from just that option alone."
As big name artists like NIN and Radiohead pave they way, I fervently hope and pray we are seeing the end of the RIAA.
I haven't bought an American CD in years because of how the RIAA strong armed colleges and effectively shut down web radio.
This system is far fairer to the artists as well; they get a far bigger piece of the pie. There will be fallout for artists I am sure, but I think it will lead to a far richer music industry in the U.S.
In short, I am just really happy that a few bands are beginning to pave the way to a world without an RIAA.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
When people are given choices, they are often through their own free will kind to other human beings. There is no need for guns pointing at peoples heads to make us play nice and share - we will do it naturally if left alone.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I liked your comment but you're making a bad assumption:
:)
"Would they spend $300, or anything close to it, for special edition releases of albums from all the other artists they like?"
Sure, many people listen to dozens if not hundreds of different artists, but when asked, they'd say they only have 1 or 2 or a few favorites. It seems NIN are favorites to 750,000 / 300 fans, but there might be just as many Barry Manilow fans willing to pay just as much and sell just as many copies.
The intersection of this fan base is likely to be very small, though.
I really hope that this trend continues. I'd love to see something like this:
An online music store with all kinds of music (like the iTunes store), but:
- No DRM *at all*.
- Previews as MP3. Say, the first 30 secs of every track. The first 50% would be better. Should be "kind of good quality", say >= 128kbit.
- All tracks in at least the following formats:
- MP3 "good quality", say >= 256 kbit
- Lossless in a free, open format. Flac in other words.
- The ability to use the store from the web.
- The ability to put multiple tracks in a "cart" and download the whole cart as a zip would be a big plus.
- An open API for different clients would be a huge plus.
- And, last but not least, the ability to have some sort of "account" and to re-download tracks I already purchased, whenever, wherever and how many times I want to.
It would be ok if the tracks are somehow watermarked, i.e. if they can tell from a file which user downloaded a track and block his or her account if they are redistributing the tracks.
I would also appreciate formats "better than CD", e.g. Flac tracks in DVD Audio quality (24 bit, 96 kHz if I'm not mistaken). I'd also appreciate album covers and similar stuff.
I am prepared to pay for a quality product I can use for years to come. I am not prepared to pay for some badly encoded track I can use on few specific players, and I do *not* want to re-buy everything if I switch players/want higher quality etc.
Just had to say that.
What I don't understand is why he didn't offer the whole thing on bit torrent as opposed to 1/4 of it. The whole album is licensed under creative commons, so all the piratebay torrents are totally legal. Why isn't he running his own tracker with a few ads here and there to make a few extra bucks off the freeloaders instead of letting piratebay get the ad revenue?
It's not that he needs the money, but it would set a better example than the admittedly spectacular one he's already setting. Speaking of setting examples, why isn't he taking his immense wealth and starting a brand new record label based on this tiered style of distribution? (e.g. all you can drink free downloads for the freeloaders in exchange for some ad revenue and high quality spiffy packaging for the paying customers.)
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
I'm downloading the lossless version now. Mr Reznor is more than welcome to my 5 bucks. I hadn't listened to NIN since the nineties when one of my room mates used to blast "Closer" all the time. Not my kind of thing, but I figured there was nothing to lose in downloading the free tracks from "Ghosts" yesterday. I'm a big Brian Eno fan, so I was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked it.
This is how it should be. I would never have even listened to this album if I hadn't been able to try out those tracks for free. Being able to download DRM free in lossless is the killer. I hope this is a massive success for NIN to encourage other artists to do the same.
I really like how he has taken advantage of the digital format to make the album art for each song different. It shows up in iTunes album view with the regular cover, but if I play it on my iPod Touch the art (which is damn cool BTW) changes with each song. It's a nice little effect.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
Maybe.
But if ever there was a man in the perfect position to lead a revolution in the music industry it's Trent Reznor. He's become the de facto figurehead for progress in the music business. And he has all he needs to successfully lead such a revolution: 1. immense fame, 2. immense critical acclaim, 3. a willingness to experiment with radical new business models, and 4. gobs of money to serve as venture capital.
Aside from the possibilities of being totally unaware of his potential or unfortunately unwilling lead the movement as you imply is possible, I can conjure up no reasons as to why he hasn't tried already.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Yet, as The Register notes, despite the low price "Pirate Bay has eight thousand concurrent downloads at time of writing." Even if you ignore the RIAA-style maths in calculating lost earnings it's not a good sign that people are not prepared to pay even $5 for 4 CDs worth of music in a DRM-free format.
That's one way of becoming rich. Another is to find something people want that you can acquire a monopoly on, and sell it without competition. People selling CDs have chosen this course, and they are only able to do so with the government's help.
No, those people aren't in the business of selling music. They are in the business of manufacturing copies. That is something anybody can do. Machines can do it for essentially no cost. That's why they need the government to protect them from competition.
Sure, but the only reason they can get away with charging $10.00 is because the government helps them. And the only reason all those sales go to them rather than some other manufacturer is because the government helps them. Without government help, the competition would drive their prices down and take a large portion of their sales.
Sure there is, the government is stepping in to make particular people rich instead of letting the free market do its job. I'm not totally against the concept of copyright and I'm certainly not arguing that free markets are perfect. But you're only looking at the demand side of the equation and giving them a free pass on the supply side, and that's something that we, as a society, are totally subsidising them on. And when they are making millions of dollars, it's not a bad idea to question how justified that subsidy is.
Yeah, see, the trouble with that is there's nothing whatsoever in my comment to suggest this. It's pure fantasy on your part.
For what it's worth, I write code for a living. A lot of people consider that to be just as creative as music. It's certainly of more practical value.
Oh, I have nothing at all against rewarding them for their hard work. What I object to is rewarding them for the things that don't take any hard work — the manufacturing of copies.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
If Mr Razor was an unknown releasing his first album this way, their would be far fewer people willing to pay $300 for a limited edition set and far fewer people even paying $5 for the normal set... assuming we even knew it was available.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
However, is this success likely to be duplicated?
No, the most likely outcome is still no money for the artist, but what's new about that?
The difference is that this business model has two outcomes in order or likelyhood:
The traditional model has three outcomes, in order or likelyhood:
The pipes were clogged!
Seriously, I wouldnt blame NiN. As much of a pain in the ass as this is, look at the bright side; it's the beginning of a new era in music that doesn't include the corporations. There is bound to be some hiccups and you can bet that the people in charge of the website sales are overwhelmed. Patience.
On the other hand, I still think they got the pricing wrong even at about 14 cents per track. Everyone knows that all of the tracks will be up on torrents immediately. The price is really a reflection of how badly you want to support the artist. All the tracks should be available for free, or at least with flexible pricing like radiohead. I'd be willing to guess they would make about the same amount of money since the folks that dont want to pay will simply download torrents, whereas the ones that want to show support will pay.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
I think that raises another point about Ghosts that has been largely missed: this isn't an otherwise terribly marketable album, at least not from a label perspective. It's 36 varied purely instrumental tracks with no catchy singles, no hooks, and nothing ideal for radio play. If Trent had handed this to a major label they would probably have just quietly buried it. Yes, there are niche labels for this kind of material out there (Warp being the most prominent that comes to mind), but they don't exactly have major marketing budgets. I suspect Ghosts will get far more listeners who weren't already fans going this route.
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I downloaded the first free album just to see if it was worth purchasing. I was extremely disappointed. One song consisted of the same 11 notes played over and over again for 3 minutes. One song had so much distortion it was painful to listen to. A lot of it sounded like the soundtrack to Alone In The Dark, or some other similarly themed game. The music was extremely repetive. Most of the songs were extremely simple, and were basically the equivalent musically of "Mary Had a Little Lamb", although the song sounded a little darked. I'm not sure why everybody thinks it's so great. I love that bands are starting to have much better online music offerings, and breaking away from the labels. However I found that this album just isn't something that I enjoy listening to.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
That's where corporations like Apple or other dedicated online music stores can really help out though. It's not cost efficient for most bands to buy the necessary servers just for the 1-2 week period following the album's release. You probably won't find many hosting providers that want to sell you a ton of traffic for 2 weeks, and then have your usage drop to 5% of that. I think that with all the rage over this type of distribution, there really needs to be a more efficient way to distribute it. First, if you want it free, it should be bittorrent only. That would get rid of a lot of congestion. I would also like to see something from bittorrent where you make your purchase, get a key, and enter that into the application. After you enter a valid key, you're allowed to join the torrent. You'd need a central server for key verification, but that would be a lot easier to setup, and not overload, than everybody trying to download the music off a single server.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Why? There's a lot of music I wouldn't pay $5 for; most of that I wouldn't bother downloading even if it was free.
Most.
There does indeed exist some music that I wouldn't pay $5 to get access to, but that I'm sufficiently interested in to give a listen to. Having acquired that music, I'd get a chance to listen to it, and decide whether (a) I wanted to buy it, and (b) whether I was interested in acquiring or buying other music from the same artist(s).
$5 is cheap, but not cheap enough to remove all music from the "I'll need to try before buying" category.
Do I think that's what all of those 8,000 concurrent downloads are? Of course not. I do think, though, that the vast majority of those downloads never would have been sales in the first place, and that the number would not be drastically lower even if the official download was free. At a guess, Pirate Bay is simply the default content provider for some people, and it never even occurs to them to look for an "official" provider, regardless of price.
That, and some people are hoarders; I'll bet a fair chunk of those Pirate Bay downloads never get listened to.
I think an important thing to mention to those that are not NIN fans is how this release was announced.
It wasn't.
Two hours before this album was released online, there was an ominous "Two hours..." message posted at nin.com
Then, BAM, new album. Even the most die-hard NIN fan had no clue it was coming. Where as before the marketing procedure took months, and there were many slow leaks in the process, this time Trent was in control.
Make an album, make artwork, set up servers, release online. Its a good setup. Do you have any idea about the kind of label BS that you have to go through with an album? The promotion, the radio samplers, the flyers, posters, it is a lot of time and effort - there is like a 3 month window for it all. Here, Trent took his 10 weeks to make it, and then pretty much put it on his website.
You can bet the next album has an even shorter window, and again he is in control of its secrecy. I've never before seen someone announce *and* release an album on the same day, and with Trent's history, he was the last person I expected it from.
This is where services like Amazon's S3 makes sense (http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=16427261).
Traffic on demand and you only pay for what you use. Pricing is under $0.18 per GB transferred.
All the talk about individuals spreading torrents of the paid-for tracks is missing the point.
Anyone care to bet that the RIAA and/or labels themselves aren't putting non-label artists tracks on the Pirate Bay just to undermine artists attempts to try and find an alternative business model?