My Story
A week ago at around 9:00 PM, I was among the many NIN fans that screamed “oh my God!” into their computer screens. That’s right, Nine Inch Nails actually released an album, I mean, albums, online last Sunday.
Reznor had been hinting on something big for a couple of weeks prior to the release of Ghosts I-IV. At around 7:10 PM on March 2nd, he posted “2 hours” on his blog, I was expecting something by the 9’0 clock hour, but not something this big.
When I connected to www.nin.com at about 9:00 PM, the site changed pretty drastically. And more importantly, there was the text that said “Ghosts I-IV is available RIGHT NOW” on my computer screen.
I froze for a second to take it all in, but then I immediately went to the fan forum, and of course, people exploded. I typed in some inane comments about how excited I was and went straight to nin.com to get my hands on Ghosts.
But alas, it was not that easy.
I was able to cruise past the options page that listed all the editions that you can choose from. I clicked on the $10.00, 2 CD option and tried to proceed, but the pages after that couldn’t even load. Apparently most of the people have the same problem as me, because the site was so congested with people trying to order. The early birds that did get their order through reported that they have trouble downloading the files. It was chaos and confusion.
Then we came to the conclusion that we broke the NINternet , LOL.
However, I did managed to listen to the few selected tracks at AinR, and I was delighted with new music. After I calmed down a bit, I read more into the release: it is a 36 tracks instrumental album described as “music for daydream”.
Dude, that’s trippy.
I had the burning desire to own the album, to listen to it, so I went over to Amazon to buy the album for $5.00. Loaded it into my iPod, and I was amazed at the variety, the texture, and the depth.
I was able to get my order through the next day after one failed attempt. But problems didn’t end there, even though I received my receipt, my download link is nowhere to be seen (as I’m writing this, I still don’t have the download link). But I let that go, because I already got a MP3 version and managed to snatch the Apple Lossless version that I wanted from somewhere else. I got what I paid for, even though it wasn’t from the download link.
Here Comes the Analytical Stuff
The first thing that the press said about this release was that NIN pulled a “Radiohead”. While it is an acceptable analogy, there are some significant differences.
One, this is not a pay-what-you-want method. Even though there are variety of options for the customers to choose form, Ghosts have a set price. It’s offering different packages too, and this distribution method seemed more well-thought out than In Rainbows.
In Rainbows seemed more about donation, Ghosts seemed more about business.
Reznor is not giving the whole thing away for free (theoretically), instead, he used the method of free-samples to get people to buy it. he offered 9 songs for the free (through BitTorrent, no less) to build interests. He seemed more cautious after Niggy Tardust , and takes the mind of a businessman.
He took time to make this a worthy and fair purchase also: for $5.00, you get 36 songs, a PDF, and DRM-free, high quality files in the format that you want. One of In Rainbows’s complaints were bad quality, well, Reznor’s effort solves that.
Reznor is a vocal advocate for online distribution, and he’s a good man for taking a step. While he is not the first one to try online distribution (no, the first one is NOT Radiohead, they’re the first big act to do that), I think that he offered the best method so far. Business-wise. That is not to say that his method this time is perfect: the servers didn’t do their jobs right.
Of course, due to high volume of downloads, their site crushed, and people started screaming that their downloads doesn’t work. Perhaps it was poor-planning on their part, or perhaps they underestimated their fanbase.
But he fact that the site crushed and that they sold out their $300 edition under 2 days is a good sign, this means that they have business. People are coming in and giving him money. The downloads of Ghosts were ranked high in torrent sites, even if they didn’t get people’s money, they got their ears.
And here’s a larger question: will this method work for others? Yes and no. for big and well established bands, I think this plan would work fine. There’s your cheap and worthy download at a low price for the poor and the casual fans, and there’s your expensive deluxe edition for the hardcore.
For unknown and the smaller bands, I think the Radiohead method works better. The donation-esque method is not as imposing. Even a low set-price may drive away customers because they don’t know the band and are not familiar with the music, a $5.00 may sounds outrageous to them for an unknown band, I would think it’s better for them to donate according to their own will. Donating and buying is two different things. You also don’t need extra accessories like quality and PDF to satisfy your customer (but it would be nice), since the general expectation is lower for things like that with a smaller band. They don’t have the fanbase for deluxe editions either (at least not for $300), a simple release should be able to do the trick.
But who knows what the future holds? More well-known artists have to participate in order for us to imagine how things will be.
