Amazon's Best Selling MP3 Album For 2008 Was Available Legally For Free
from the give-people-a-reason-to-buy dept
As some of you may know, in a week and a half I'm giving a presentation at the music industry MidemNet conference, focusing on how Trent Reznor's various business model experiments highlight the future of the music industry. I'll be putting the final touches on my presentation this week, and it's great to find one additional data point: the top selling MP3 download on Amazon last year was Nine Inch Nails' Ghosts I-IV album, which you probably know Reznor put under a pretty open Creative Commons license (and even gave away a bunch of the tracks himself). In other words, you could go on pretty much any file sharing system out there and legally download the music for personal use... and yet it was still the top selling downloadable album (this is on top of all the money earned by Reznor's other business models associated with this album). Certainly puts a nice little cherry on top of the theme of my presentation.
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Filed Under: best selling, business models, creative commons, mp3s, music, nine inch nails, trent reznor
Companies: amazon
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Can you have a video, or at least the presentation itself available to us after you give it?
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It could be put into DVD or avi/divx format and made available on the more popular torrent sites... I'd download that!!
And, depending upon the presentation quality & convincingness, I'd play it for many of my more clueless gringo amigos.
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Small Minds
The idea that the album might have sold so many copies BECAUSE it was also free is a concept that is beyond the mental capacity of the legalistic bean-counter minds that run too many major businesses.
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This is EXCELLENT news!
The only downside to this is the mention of Amazon. Now, I love Amazon. I go there first when doing online shopping. However, I've not purchased music from the site because it's $0.99.
Distribution costs for an MP3 are extremely low, especially given all a buyer's doing is copying the damn thing, so in reality, there is no distribution.
So why the inflated price? Bogus bull. I do know, as a store, Amazon (et al) should get some revenue for hosting, but between the artist and the hosting, it should not come to $0.99.
Until this price comes down, I'll search elsewhere for my music. I don't care how "valuable" the song is to most people. I'd rather pay $1 to support 4 artists than $1 to support one, leaving the other 3 out.
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Re: This is EXCELLENT news!
It is excellent news, though as someone above noted, I'm skeptical that anyone will look at it and not think "but imagine how much they would have made if they got paid for all of it," completely missing the fact that being freely avalable drove many if not most of those sales.
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Re: Re: This is EXCELLENT news!
Of course it's all independent labels, no major labels, but here's just some of the bands/artist with independent releases: Charlie Daniels Band, James Taylor, Bob Marley, Dolly Parton, Credence Clearwater Revival, Aretha Franklin, Sevendust, Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, Miles Davis, Offspring, Moby, Gravity Kills, Manowar, Willie Nelson, Apocalyptica (no not their recent album unfortunately), lil Wayne, lil John, Ludacris, you know bands people have never heard of heh (admittedly some of these bands more commercial successes were on major label albums and not available here, but generally good stuff nonetheless and a trove of gems you might not have heard before).
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Re:This is excellent News!
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whatev
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Knock em dead!!!
Obviously, intelligence and practicality don't always get through, but we need voices like yours.
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Quality!
Mike will there be a video or anything we could see of your presentation? I'd very interesting in hearing it! :)
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go get em
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You get what you pay for
Onm top of that, there are other costs hidden like the cost to maintain staff / buildings / water / sewer / servers / lawyers and to pay the artist.
But you argument that they are all making a lot of money at 99 cents a wong, it is without merit and anyone giving it away free is looking to creat a demand that they can use in the future to sell. So while I would love to have everything for free, there is always a price, maybe not today or tomorrow, but someday.
Free never is and when it isn't about the money, its about the money. It is always about money.
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Re: You get what you pay for
Commonsense2009 wrote:
Sure. And Apple’s iTunes Store is the same—doesnt’t bring in much profit for Apple at all. The record labels insist on grabbing the lion’s share of it. And the artists? They get even less. That’s why selling recordings is a dead-end business.
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And yeah, I ponied up for Ghosts, but not through Amazon. I ordered it though the official NIN website, and it was worth every penny.
WAR
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Did the same thing with The Slip even though he released it to begin with entirely free. Still bought it just because I collect them by this point.
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Many "quirky" artists might have a bunch of short songs or riffs that still count as a track, but I don't think anyone would pay $1 for the "Her Majesty" from Abbey Road.
On the other hand, artists like Tangerine Dream only have two or four long songs on an entire album, so clearly a sliding price structure in needed.
But $1 for the random track here and there is totally fair. Maybe you can get extra value by including remixes, or charging $1 for the track but $2 for the full CD single, which would include multiple versions of the track.
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DRM free but do Amazon's MP3s contain watermarks
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