I love NIN so I was happy to see the announcement about their new album. Their website has been slammed so I wasn't able to purchase it directly from them, so I just bought it from Amazon using their new downloader for Linux.
I hope Trent follows up in the future and blogs about how the album did sales-wise. It will be interesting to see how many people supported the band and how many just downloaded the free album.
I downloaded the free album. It's ... ok. But...the coolest thing about the album release, to me, is it's liscence...the whole creative commons share liscence...go trent!!
Posted by: joshp | March 03, 2008 at 14:48
"It will be interesting to see how many people supported the band and how many just downloaded the free album."
This statement presents a false dichotomy. For whatever purpose, the artist is offering the album for free, so you're supporting them by downloading the free version. You may not be supporting them with direct or immediate financial compensation, but you're supporting them in other ways. Please don't perpetuate the "freeloader" idea that the mainstream media has been trying to pin on fans of Radiohead (and now, no doubt, of NIN) -- these fans are acting with the full blessing of the artists.
Posted by: Alex | March 03, 2008 at 15:37
Good point there, Alex. There is a point of view here that in order to support an artist, one is Required by some unwritten law to give them little green pieces of paper, or whatever color the little pieces of paper are where you live.
If it is given as free (as in beer) and the artist (as in this case) encourages you to use it for your digital fun, then support could (and would) be to simply USE the work (on your site, in your video, whatever...) and give the credit to the artist. Trent's model is fantastic, you give away the music, or charge a ridiculously low price for flac-lossless or mp3, and you have a multi-tier system of hard media product (that actually has big ticket price value). This is in direct contrast to simply charging 25 bucks for a 2 cd set. It's nice to see a model where the music itself if either free, or next to free, and any potential costs are in relation to items of real value (ie, multitrack recordings, vinyl, high quality collector prints, etc...)
My biggest complaint against the industry is the lack of quality, with the demand of price going up and up. Here is real quality, IF YOU WANT IT, and a completely fair price if all you want is the music, and have media to store it on.
Posted by: joshp | March 03, 2008 at 18:39
I'm not a big NIN fan, I can take or leave most of it, so this is probably about the only way for them to get my money. I will go download the free disc (Ghosts I) and if I like what I hear, $5 is a bargain price to get the rest! Bless Amazon for supporting Linux (and Ubuntu Gutsy in particular), but I wish they had payment models other than "insert major credit card info here"...
Posted by: Wolfger | March 04, 2008 at 08:58
ACTUALLY, its just the first 9 tracks that you get for free. You have to pay at least $5 for all of it. One of the best five dollar purchases i've made in a long while XD
Posted by: Mark | March 05, 2008 at 18:35
ACTUALLY, its just the first 9 tracks that you get for free. You have to pay at least $5 for all of it. One of the best five dollar purchases i've made in a long while XD
Posted by: Mark | March 05, 2008 at 18:37
Mark: the entire release is CC-SA-NC, so torrenting it for free is fine.
Posted by: James | March 06, 2008 at 19:17