First Radiohead, now NIN, what comes next?

As you can remember last year, Radiohead came out with a new album, "In Rainbows". What was different about this album was that they made it available only online, and said to the consumer to pay whatever they felt it was worth. Apparently, this business model netted Radiohead more money than all of their previous albums' digital sales added together.

Fast-forward to this month, MArch 2008. Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor's brainchild released their new album "Ghosts I-IV" onlline. First nine tracks were free, the whole 36 set was $5 dollars via digital download, $10 for a 2 disc cd available in April (also gave you access to the digital downloads), $75 deluxe edition, and a Ultra deluxe edition at $300 dollars limited to 2500 copies.

Today, it is being said that the $300 version is sold out. Wow!! That's $750k gross. Guessing it cost $30/unit to make, that is a tidy profit of about $675k. Good for Trent. Now can a new artist do the same? I don't think so, at least not on that scale. But it's easy to give away music, and the model of giving more value as the price goes up should not be lost to new bands. However, if you can get your video on Youtube's TOP list, or be the hottest thing on the news like Ashley Dupre, then you will get to broad exposure that could lead to successful record sales.

One last thing about Ghosts I-IV, Trent is having a movie festival letting people submit videos to the music in Ghosts. He will have a festival showcasing the best ones from that. Now this is another brilliant move by NIN. Masterful marketing at it's best.

Stay tuned!