Even though the album was available for free on BitTorrent tracker sites everywhere, fans purchased the album from the online retailer in droves.
In a surprising feat which the RIAA claims is impossible with illegal file-sharing, NIN’s “Ghosts I-IV” was announced as being Amazon’s top selling MP3 album of 2008.
What makes it so amazing is that NIN frontman Trent Reznor personally uploaded “Ghosts I” to The Pirate Bay and private BitTorrent tracker site What.cd.
“Now that we’re no longer constrained by a record label, we’ve decided to personally upload Ghosts I, the first of the four volumes, to various torrent sites, because we believe BitTorrent is a revolutionary digital distribution method, and we believe in finding ways to utilize new technologies instead of fighting them,” he wrote.
In addition, he offered it all up under a Creative Commons license so that listeners were free to mix and share NIN’s work.
A post on the Creative Commons blog praises the achievement:
NIN fans could have gone to any file sharing network to download the entire CC-BY-NC-SA album legally. Many did, and thousands will continue to do so. So why would fans bother buying files that were identical to the ones on the file sharing networks? One explanation is the convenience and ease of use of NIN and Amazon’s MP3 stores. But another is that fans understood that purchasing MP3s would directly support the music and career of a musician they liked.
The next time someone tries to convince you that releasing music under CC will cannibalize digital sales, remember that Ghosts I-IV broke that rule, and point them here.
Being available for free didn’t stop NIN fans from album in record numbers. Estimates put Reznor’s early sales of ” Ghosts I-IV” at $750,000, later reaching $1.6 million in its first week of release. He did this by offering $75 and $300 deluxe versions that included things like a Blu-ray disc, a DVD of the multitrack audio files from the project, videos, deluxe packaging, and more.
jared@zeropaid.com
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Amazing! Was this album that good? Maybe but look at the price only $ 5 !!! You music industry people look again ONLY 5 BUCKS!!
Are you getting it now?
$5 is a good profit per record for them as they got the full $5. Typically artists only get $1-2 per record. I don’t see how other artists can’t look at this and think “oh they have something here!”
Too bad this news will never reach Congress or help them connect the dots.
I think you’ll find quite a few larger bands opting for being independent marketing and self-publishing. There are thousands of companies that offer production services for musicians that are independent – on a per job basis like a contractor. That seems more reasonable and like the way it should have always been.
The problem really is that “stars” will have to actually offer something and not just marketing. NIN believed their music was competitive and it was. Some of this copyright bs is covering up poor sales from labels pushing acts with no talent stale music.