The Nine Inch Nails album Ghosts I-IV has been nominated for a Grammy award for Best Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package.
Making this notable is the fact that the album was licensed under a Creative Commons license meaning anyone can legally download it for free from torrent sites and other P2P. For its release, the band even published the first disc on the infamous public torrent tracker The Pirate Bay, where it remains highly seeded, even today.
The band released the album for free, but did ask for voluntary donations of $5 USD for the CD. They also sold a few CD packages including a $300 “Ultra-Deluxe Limited Edition.” Despite offering the album for free, the band still made a large amount of money, proving a record label is not necessary to be successful.
NIN’s publicist said in March:
“Nine Inch Nails’ 36-track instrumental opus Ghosts I-IV, released March 2 via NIN.com, has amassed a first week total of 781,917 transactions (including free and paid downloads as well as orders for physical product), resulting in a take of $1,619,420 USD.”
Result for: money
Citing yesterdays disappointing November hardware sales, CNNMoney has called the Sony PlayStation 3 a “sinking ship.”
The numbers show that the PS3 sold 19 percent less consoles year-on-year from the same period in 2007, and CNNMoney believes that a substantial price cut is necessary if the console wants to see a growth in sales anytime soon.
After being outsold 840,000 to 380,000 for the month by its main rival the Xbox 360, many analysts have agreed that a price cut is necessary before the console falls behind by an “insurmountable margin.”
The CNNMoney article also attributed the slow down in sales to three specific reasons. The high price tag (All Xbox 360 models are cheaper than cheapest PS3), the fact that no one cares about Blu-ray, and the lack of strong selling titles for the platform.
We can all agree that price is an issue, but the other two issues CNNMoney brings up are a bit, for lack of a better word, iffy. Blu-ray player sales and Blu-ray movie sales continue to grow exponentially and show similar numbers to that of DVD when it was the “new” format in the late 90s and early 2000s.
Sony has had some hot selling exclusive titles such as Metal Gear Solid 4, LittleBIGPlanet, Resistance 1 and 2, and Uncharted but software sales arent as strong as that of the Xbox 360, from most accounts. Whether it needs more exclusive titles is up for debate however.
Result for: money
Sony America has announced that the much delayed PlayStation Home online social service will in fact launch before the end of the year, although as a beta and not a final release.
There was no specific date set or how many beta users will be allowed to test out Home but it appears that the service will come as part of a new firmware upgrade.
At the beginning of the year, Sony promised Home would be available by the fall, after promising before that it would be ready by the spring.
Electronista explains that Home “will allow users from around the world to interact with each other and set up uniquely furnished apartments, virtual stores that can earn them virtual credits and play casual games. Users will be able to spend real money in the virtual world as well by shopping for games and products. Home also promises to double as an online interface for Sony’s TV and movie offerings.”
