Another blow to the RIAA’s fight against the internet
The album ‘Ghosts I-IV’ by Nine Inch Nails has snagged the top-selling spot on Amazon for 2008. This was after band poobah Trent Reznor himself offered the album up for free on the Pirate Bay and private music tracker What.cd, as well as the band’s website. Even so, album sales topped $1.6 million in both the mp3 and cd format in the first week alone. Of course, Reznor was not the first to try this.
Back in September 1999, David Bowie released his album ‘hours…’ in its entirety as a free download. Although that album didn’t spark a sales boom, barely cracking the Billboard Top 50, it did set the stage for things to come.
In October 2007, Radiohead offered their ‘In Rainbows’ album as a free download, but asked for voluntary donations. According to comScore, over the first month about 1.2 million fans downloaded the album. While about 62% paid nothing, 38% paid what averaged to $6.00 per download. Factoring in various production costs, that comes to just under $1.2 million in one month.
But Reznor’s experiment is more like the Bowie’s than Radiohead’s in that both Bowie and Reznor saw the downloads as a gift. And, by offering up early, free access to the music, they hoped that fans would want to show support by purchasing the CDs. Whereas in Radiohead’s case, fans thought the download was the release, only to be hit later with a full-priced CD with an altered track line-up.
It’s fitting that Reznor picked up where Bowie began. Their two paths crossed in 1995 when Reznor used snippets of Bowie’s music from the album ‘Outside’ as part of the soundtrack for the movie ‘Seven’. This lead to a double-bill tour, introducing Bowie to a whole new generation.
Kudos to Trent Reznor for once again disproving the RIAA’s argument that music downloads are the sole cause of their market crash. Yes, illegal downloads do rip money out of the pockets of hard-working musicians.
However, when done properly, allowing fans to download music can only benefit sales. Whether it’s sales of CDs or swag or concert tickets. The economy of the music industry is changing and the RIAA is too slow to change with it.
Buy on Amazon:
Ghosts I-IV
Ghosts I-IV
