From the Chicago Tribune. By Greg Kot Link.
A week after releasing his four-volume instrumental work “Ghosts I-IV” through his Web site, Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor is reporting that he amassed more than $1.6 million in orders and downloads.
Reznor made the albums available at five different prices, including a free download, without any advance publicity. His marketing campaign, such as it is, consisted of a terse announcement on his nin.com Web site. On Wednesday, he reported 781,917 transactions, including free and paid downloads and orders of physical product. A $300 box set sold out of 2,500 copies within a day. Nine of the 36 songs were made available as a free download. The complete set also was available as a $5 download, a $10 double-CD and a $75 set with bonus visual content.
This wasn't the first time this was done. Radiohead released their album "In Rainbows" with a pay what you want platform back in October. The difference is they didn't release sales statistics. So one can only hope this wakes up the record labels enough to seriously question their ever shrinking role in the industry, and come up with something other than suing music fans. I really can't think of a better idea than paying five dollars for an album and having the money go straight to the artist. Makes sense, no? Obviously this wouldn't work for everybody, but if enough artists go that route it might be enough to force the "big four" to fix this broken industry.
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