I've written before about my enormous respect for Trent Reznor and his impact on popular music. Now, he's raising the stakes for everyone distributing any kind of music on the web.
There was a lot of talk recently about how the release of Radiohead's latest album, In Rainbows, on the web before it was released in stores as a traditional disk, and how this was going to shake the music industry to its very foundations.
Here's the exact headline of one such story, one of a gajillion you can find on the topic: Radiohead's Album Threatens Music Industry. No need to mention the name of that news outlet here. You probably caught the story at the time, if not, you can look it up. The fact is that virtually EVERYONE got this story exactly wrong.
Yes, it was cool that Radiohead offered a DRM-free, web-only release of the album, for any price you wanted to pay, including zero. Even so, the band made more than they'd ever taken home on any album before. They haven't said how much money that is, or how much they made, but I love it. I'm a huge Radiohead fan, especially The Bends, which is definitely one of my desert-island disks. Anything that makes them money is a-okay in my book.
Here are the rubs: it was very low bandwidth (160 Mbps) compared to other DRM-free releases --less than HALF of some of them. Also, it's over now. You can buy it digitally from Amazon etc. at 256 Mbps, or as a CDm both at a fixed rate from a major record label. As far as you're concerned today, the web thing never happened. What kind of threat is THAT? None, that's what.
Now our boy Trent, on the other hand, HE'S shaking things up. He left his major label for the express purpose of controlling the distribution and cost of his recordings. He's not at all happy with what had been happening, including the outcome of his direct confrontation of his label regarding what he feels are outrageous pricing.
Here's what he expressed to fans:
"Has anyone seen the price come down? Okay, well, you know what that means - STEAL IT. Steal away. Steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealin'. Because one way or another these mother****ers will get it through their head that they're ripping people off and that that's not right."
You can see that clip below. I couldn't figure out how to add two movies to the page, so here's the link to the full rant, and the song it preceded.
Feel free to disagree, but he said what he said. And indeed, he has put his money where his mouth is. I got my copy of his new recording free, directly from him. And unlike other digital downloads, it includes ALL THE ARTWORK, including a 40-page pdf of photographs taken alongside the project.
Now the free part is only the first volume of 4: 9 songs of 36. But you can stream the whole thing for free, or buy it for only $5. That includes the release as 320 Mbps MP3, genuinely lossless FLAC, Apple's fake lossless codec (sorry, it's true). For only $20, you get the immediate download now, plus a 2-CD release when it's available: a 6-panel digipack with the printed PDF, along with some goodies like wallpapers and such. The kids eat that stuff up.
Things get really interesting from there. A $75 deluxe edition includes all of that, plus a Blu-ray release of the album in 2 versions, including hi-def stereo. Following a precedent that Trent has set for a few songs, all 36 tracks are available as separate multi-track mixes that you can play with in any audio editor on Mac or Windows. (Trent is a famous Mac zealot, so you can be sure that he had Garage Band in mind), plus all that other stuff.
Most interesting: a 2500 limited edition that includes all of that plus heavyweight vinyl, plus 2 large books of artwork, embossed covers, the whole deal in a fabric slipcase. Plus 2 giclee prints: enjoy as is, or ready to frame. The package signed and hand-numbered by Trent...and more...for $700.
The amazing thing: that edition has long sold-out, long before the actual release. It's among the reasons why Trent was able to take in $1.3 million in the first WEEK of its availability...again, before the releases in April and May of various versions.
Pay for only what you want, as few or as many goodies that you want, entirely outside the label distribution chain. Now THAT starts looking like a threat.
So about a week after my download, Ars Technica ran a pretty cool story about the whole thing...albeit without the link to the thing that I provided above.
PS. Trent wasn't the first to speak out about labels overpricing records. Tom Petty held up the release of his 1981 record Hard Promises because the record company raised the price of it after promising they wouldn't. It was a big deal at the time, but the story never comes up anymore. It had 2 big hits (The Waiting, and A Woman's in Love), but it's still among my favorite of his records.
Digg it
