Nine Inch Nails – Ghosts, Success on Their Own Terms

caleb — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 06:18:53 +0000

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or rarely frequent the file sharing news/blogs, you’ve heard about NIN’s latest album, Ghosts. The album is an experiment in promotion and has been a standout success. There are a lot of options for getting the music, ranging in price from Free to $75. There was an option for a $300 set of goodies that sold out in two days. That’s right SOLD OUT in two days. This garnered a neat $750,000¹ from those alone. In the first week the bands total transactions were up to $1.6 million². Most of this is pure profit for Trent Rezner et al. The experiment moves beyond NIN releasing this album w/o any label support and still making money. It goes much further.Their last studio release was Year Zero, this came with several of the tracks turned into remix heaven by their release as digital downloads of the master tracks. Even further out on the limb is the fact that they opened up a page with the focus on the sharing of remixed tracks. With Ghosts they push this idea of openness to a new height. The album is released under Creative Commons. This is an alternative for creative people to let the public have some access to their work without having to hire lawyers to get the proper clearances for small projects. And it makes Trent one of most forward thinking people in music. Okay more accurately he’s one of the most know forward thinkers. What I find very invigorating about all of this is that it means that he is opening the doors on the creative thoughts of all of his fans, and the fans he will make from doing this.But he isn’t stopping just at the music level. He is also opening a music video contest on YouTube. The rules are here. This is really exciting times to be in.This album takes the Radiohead in Rainbows experiment to a whole new level. It also calls the recording industry to task. If you allow the fans be fans and not punish them for being excited for their media there is plenty of money on the table to go round. Also it helps the fans show their appreciateion and what they can do if empowered. In this ideal everyone wins. The band makes money which allows them to spend more time in their studio making the music, and the fans feel even more deeply connected to their media since they are allowed to use in in their lives like real human beings not criminals. Granted there will be a lot of not so hot stuff created, 90% of everything is crap, but there will be that bit that rises up and shows itself to be the amazing talent that it is.Thus I say, “Good on ya!” to NIN and “Cheers” on the success of Ghosts. May this serve as milestone on the way to a more sane use of copyrights and the material that makes all of us happy. To the future! ::clink of glasses::

¹: gondwanaland.com and additional commentary at BoingBoing
²: Yahoo News

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Nine Inch Nails – Ghosts, Success on Their Own Terms