Shocker! Nine Inch Nails’ Free Album Was Also Amazon’s 2008 Bestseller
Amazon recently published its list of 100 best selling albums of 2008, and Nine Inch Nails’ album Ghosts I-IV sat at the top. This has a few observers of the music industry scratching their heads because NIN front man Trent Reznor made a large portion of the digital version of the album permanently available for free on his website. Not only that, he personally uploaded it to notorious torrent site the Pirate Bay. Now if a musician is giving away his music for free, why are people still buying it?
The answer probably has something to do with the relatively low bitrate (low sound quality) of the free versions, the bonus-laden deluxe editions that were for sale, NIN’s loyal fanbase, listeners who enjoyed the nine free tracks and then bought the rest, and the buzz generated by the early adopter/super fans who got the album for free and talked it up to their less tech-savvy friends. Whatever the case may be, it’s certainly fascinating that despite the widespread free distribution of the songs, the album still outsold every other album on one of the web’s biggest music retailers.
Notice that Radiohead’s In Rainbows, which the band made available online for only a suggested donation, is at number 11 on the list. Weird times.
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