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: nine inch nails
Last week the popular rock band Nine Inch Nails began offering their latest album exclusively as a digital download on their website, and those sales, along with orders for an expensive collector’s edition, have netted the band $1.6 million USD since its release.
That figure, released by the band yesterday, is based on 800,000 individual downloads and orders for the new album, Ghosts I-IV. The first quarter of the album was free to download and a full digital download cost $5 USD. Fans could also order a physical copy for $10 USD and $300 USD for a collector’s tin which has already sold out. The collector’s edition as well as a $75 USD deluxe version both include a “DVD with the RAW tracks used to compose the album as well as a Blu-ray version with Surround audio.”
We can only hope that this starts a trend in the music world, where the artists make the money they deserve.
Result for: nine inch nails
In commemoration of its upcoming Nine Inch Nails: Lights in the Sky tour, the band has released a nice five-track EP on its website with songs from itself and four other bands which are on the tour.
According to the NIN website, the songs are all “high quality, DRM-free, fully-tagged MP3 files” and each download will even come with “cover art and a pack of digital extras.”
The five track EP includes the following songs:
1. a place to bury strangers - “to fix the gash in your head”
2. does it offend you, yeah? - “we are rockstars”
3. crystal castles - “crimewave (crystal castles vs HEALTH)”
4. deerhunter - “like new”
5. nine inch nails - “echoplex”
For those interested in picking up the free EP, all you need to do is sign up here and provide a working email address. You will then be emailed a download code for the EP and digital extras.
In early May, the band was applauded for fighting back against the record companies and giving away part of its album “Ghosts I-IV” for free in better-than-CD quality. The band also offered the CD in physical format and the rest of the CD in digital format for much cheaper prices than most CDs cost today. Their “experiment” is said to have netted $1.6 million USD for the band, with little to no production costs and nothing to pay to the labels.
