Yostivanich

Trent Reznor, the front man for Nine Inch Nails, who has widely been acknowl­edged as one of the most impor­tant artists in the music indus­try. Trent Reznor has released a new multi-part album, Ghosts I-IV, with both a Cre­ative Com­mons license and an inno­v­a­tive pric­ing scheme. The first 9 tracks are avail­able as a free down­load from either the site or through a legal down­load from TheP­i­rate­Bay (note: a legal use of Bit­Tor­rent, those of you who think Bit­Tor­rent is only for piracy). The whole album is avail­able as a down­load in mul­ti­ple for­mats, includ­ing pure loss­less cd qual­ity, for only 5 dol­lars. You can also pur­chase the two cd set that will be mailed out on April 8^th along with an imme­di­ate down­load of the col­lec­tion. There are two other pric­ing plans, a deluxe $75 pack­age that includes a blu-ray disk of extras along with the acu­tal multi-track record­ing ses­sions so you can play with the music.

The final pack­age is a hefty $300 dol­lars and includes all of the pre­vi­ous sets, plus some more extras includ­ing being signed by Trent Reznor him­self and lim­ited to only 2,500 pos­si­bly being sold. The amaz­ing thing about this is that already inside of three days since being offered the lim­ited pack­age has already sold out. This means that already Trent Reznor has made $75,000 $750,000 not includ­ing those who paid for the smaller packages.

The thing that I par­tic­u­larly liked about what NIN did, is that the cost to sam­ple the album was free in real terms. The album could be sam­pled with­out feel­ing like you were rip­ping off the band such as what could have hap­pened in Radiohead’s plan and in the ear­lier idea Trent Reznor spawned that was Niggy Tar­dust. This was some­thing that I men­tioned back when Niggy Tar­dusts was orginally released.

If an album is going to be released on the inter­net, why not make it easy for peo­ple to sam­ple the music. Ama­zon does it for cd’s and their music store as does iTunes, get with the pro­gram. If the album is released on the inter­net before it is exposed to the pub­lic, of course peo­ple won’t cough up money to pay for an item they have no idea about. Would you buy a prod­uct with­out test­ing it first, or ver­i­fy­ing that you are receiv­ing some­thing that you want?

I will say that like Wil Wheaton, I down­loaded the album off of Bit­Tor­rent first then ulti­mately paid the $10 dol­lars for the full album and will prob­a­bly go back and buy the deluxe pack­age later on. This is an amaz­ing con­fir­ma­tion of the idea that artists can sell their work through the inter­net and they don’t have to go through record albums to make money. Granted NIN does already have a large fan base and a large mar­ket pres­ence, but Reznor did some­thing that hope­fully will change the music indusitry for the good.

(Edited: March 6, 2008 — Minor error in the amount made in the three days that it took the lim­ited pack­age to sell out.)