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March 13, 2008

The Ghost That Feeds: Nine Inch Nails new album first week nets Trent Reznor $1.6 million...

The Daily Swarm | Read Full Story >

UPDATE: ARS: Reznor: Radiohead offering was insincere, industry is inept:

Major musicians are exploring the market potential for directly interacting with their fans and releasing music independently. Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead both made headlines recently for experimenting with Internet-based releases, but NIN frontman Trent Reznor has just called Radiohead’s effort “insincere.”

“I think the way [Radiohead] parlayed it into a marketing gimmick has certainly been shrewd,” Reznor said when speaking to Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Michael Atkin. “But if you look at what they did, though, it was very much a bait and switch to get you to pay for a MySpace-quality stream as a way to promote a very traditional record sale.”

Billboard.biz:

The online release of the new Nine Inch Nails album “Ghosts I-IV” resulted in just under 800,000 transactions in its first week, totaling $1.6 million in revenue, the band revealed.

Orders include free and paid downloads, as well as online orders for physical products like various limited-edition vinyl releases, CDs, and a dual-CD box set. NIN will not release traditional sales figures to SoundScan.

Greg Kot – Chicago Tribune:

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.

EARLIER:

Nine Inch Nails go online with new Ghosts I-IV album…released simultaneously on torrent sites…Creative Commons licensed…


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22 Comments

#1 Steven Patrick Morrissey says:

good for trent. perfect mood music record. it's good to see him reaping the benefits of his new found liberation.

#2 Bob Romano says:

Great album and you pay for how much you want. You can't beat that. Way to go Trent!!

#3 j says:

brilliant. it feels good to be right, eh trent?

#4 Excellent says:

Hope it continues so it helps establish his new label The Null Corporation.

#5 J Kent says:

great news, everything about this release felt so right that it would have been a shame if the numbers weren't there.

#6 Sean says:

Interesting he chooses to take a dig at Radiohead - he couldn't have discussed his current strategy without taking a swipe at a fellow artist also trying to find their way in the new paradigm?

#7 Carlos D says:

The swipe at Radiohead is extremely unjust. RH did everything us fans wanted them to do. And is it me or do Trent's "experiments" feel a lot more like marketing gimmicks?

#8 IN G_HO/STS says:

I guess if he's gonna take a swipe at RH for being "insincere" he should come clean with the fact that the tracks on Ghosts are just the throw away D-sides from his last 10 years in the studio.

#9 His comment about RH is correct says:

RH didn't do their online design correctly. And I always felt their "Name your own price" thing was really fearful and insecure. They offered low-quality mp3's for whatever price you wanted with a "well, we're not sure how well this will do. But if you want, you can give us some money."

Trent stepped up to the plate and gave a price and also offered free versions. He said, "Look here's a flat fee, this is how much it's worth to me and here's a great deal for you." Along with giving you a choice and what you wanted to give and so on. And even when you bought his album you "still" got a high-quality mp3 version of the album along with a pdf featuring the artwork.

RH's debut online while great in concept, was horribly handled and put out there. Trent gave them 5 or grand for their album because he felt he wanted to support an artist he likes.

So please take the RH glasses off for a bit and look at what he's really saying here.

#10 Restless Consumer says:

Somebody give this guy a napkin please... once a wannabe, always a wannabe... look Trent...! here comes the next bandwagon...!

#11 I knew says:

The RH army were going to burn torches and want blood. I bought the RH release of mp3's and I thought they sucked in quality. No artwork or any options to buy a better high-quality set of digital files.

Reznor is saying they could have done it much better and I agree completely. Especially for a group who's as computer-savvy as he is. They could have thought of a much better setup for their fans instead of crappy quality mp3's. Trent took that and made it his own, and for the first time. Did the digital onling buying experience perfectly. Along with giving fans a ton of content for such a low price. Along with free version of the album and putting it on various bittorent sites.

Chill out guys, he's not saying they "suck". He's just saying their Rainbows online debut "sucked".

#12 sean says:

Isn't he the one offering up a box set for $300 consisting of throwaway tracks?

#13 yoyoyo says:

those who say 'throwaway tracks'...have you even listened to this? Do you even understand it is not intended to be your 'traditional' album release? do you understand the concept here? apparently not.

i'm a fan of both, but tr is right on this one. he did it right. he did it better. and all considered, I'll be listening to this release for far longer than i will to the much overrated 'in rainbows'.

holla holla!!!

#14 J Kent says:

Right on with his Radiohead comment, I think Trent is one of the few people in the industry right now that not only calls it how it is but also has a full understanding of the politicking and underpinnings to all of these things.

When I think back on the digital revolution Trent will be the one that got it right in my book even though Radiohead may have beat him to the punch. His offering was far more sincere and he really did it with no reservations.

I don't even consider myself a huge NIN fan, but if I were given the opportunity to have dinner with anyone in the industry today Trent would be that person.

#15 You Know You're Right says:

If 2500 people paid for the big box @ $300, then that generated $750,000. So then the remaining 788,000 people paid on the average $1.25 each. Trent should be more honest himself. You know there is a big tour coming up for NIN where Trent plans to cash in. I think both artist are great, and there is really no need for Trent to act like this.

#16 sean says:

Look, I like Trent Reznor. I've enjoyed NIN for years. But the bottom line here is that he's mud-slinging for no productive reason other than to pat himself on the back for what he's doing.

The fact is, we have the benefit of hindsight with Radiohead because they dared do it in the first place. Was it perfect? No. Did they ever claim it was? No. If they were to do it again would they do it differently? Probably.

What gets stuck in my craw is that he calls it 'insincere' then releases a 36 track album - that really should have been about 22 tracks lighter - and asks his fans to pay $300 for it because he knows they're just as rabid as Radiohead fans and would probably pay for a box of his stool.

#17 Sean says:

You make it sound like he forced people to pay for those 300 dollar sets. Of course he knew people would dole out the money for those. This isn't some crazy government scheme. He knew there would be a group who would love to have that much content, while others who can't afford it, could still have the album in a different variety.

And yes, he should pat himself on the back, his design worked. It worked very well. He set a standard that I hope artists even below RH/NIN's caliber look at in how it "should" be done. Hell, I had friends who never really heard a lot of his work but loved what he did so much that they purchased something off of that Ghosts website of his.

The guy knows the power of the internet and he used it well. He's a smart musician and he's an even smarter marketer. The guy took his own money and made a big return.

#18 RUCK FADIOHEAD says:

Radiohead sucks fucking dick anyway. Way to go, Trent.

#19 Steven Patrick Morrissey says:

what you radiohead haters fail to remember is at the end of the day. you could CHOOSE to pay nothing for the original "in rainbows" release. rh never hid the fact there would be a traditional physical release for the record. they figured they would get the step on piracy by at least making some money out of the deal which is their right.

when you're the first in a new frontier, there are going to be mistakes in the process. trent saw them and didn't allow himself to make the same ones. there's no need for him to go after rh. it's unnecessary. before anyone asks, i'm a diehard fan of both.

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#21 Mary says:

That's the thing: Trent Reznor wasn't "going after" Radiohead. As far as I can tell, he was asked for his opinion on what Radiohead did and he gave an honest answer. The subject was bound to come up sometime since both artists are experimenting in new methods of music distribution. Reznor's obviously a fan of Radiohead as well. So why is it "unnecessary" for him to critique what's going on with his peers and the new business models? If anything, there ought to be more discussion among artists. No need to start up with whether one or the other "sucks" & who's "washed-up" either. People resort to that stuff too easily.

#22 Quietus says:

And why the hell did Radiohead have to take off their downloadable album, anyways? Insincere as the Bush administration. Screw 'em.


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