There is a big difference in what Radiohead did and what Reznor is doing in terms of experimenting with music distribution on the Internet.
Radiohead allowed fans to download their music for free and kept the option open to receive voluntary payments. In doing so, Radiohead realised that music distributes itself and it is hard to control its distribution. What they did was to open a new channel through which fans could support them - voluntary payments. The side effect of voluntary payments was that there was no cost associated with attaining the piece of digitized music. Fans were showing their appreciation by making voluntary payments and not just “buying music.”
What Reznor has done instead is to force people to pay before they can download the music. The first volume of Ghosts is available for free, but the rest of the album does cost money - even if it is a very reasonable $5. This changes the relationship between NIN and their fans into a transaction, so that the fans again feel that they are “buying music”.
The Register points out that
the downloads from Reznor’s official site were trickling out at 10kbit/s. From the Torrent swarm, you get the music at between 450kbit/s and 550kbit/s, or fifty times faster. The high quality bitrate version takes just 15 minutes to acquire.
So Reznor’s site is unable (which NIN did admit) to keep up with the “sales.” What do desperate fans do? They borrow from their friends - on peer to peer networks. And it’s worth pointing out that a lot of those fans would continue to seed the tracks, effectively acting as distribution channels for the album. Now only if they could just make a simple voluntary payment to Reznor - no matter where they got their music from. Would that bring more money to NIN for future works?
Apart from all these practicalities I believe there are differences in perception too. Maybe people respond differently to a price tag on works of art that can be digitally distributed? Maybe they like to decide what they’d like to give back, as appreciation, as patronage?
Free distribution and voluntary payments - with the two channels completely divorced. That is what we at Karmafan believe - and so do many musicians on MySpace and bloggers all over the Internet.
1 comment so far ↓
You neglected to mention that what Radiohead offered you was a poor quality rip of the album over the internet, then told you that if you wanted album quality: Buy it in stores.
What Nine Inch Nails is doing, is giving you the right product immediately (I purchased the Deluxe Edition, had issues with the download link, so I just found a torrent for it. However, I still purchased it, like many did as well). While having a voluntary contribution link seems like a good idea, its also begging. Artists really shouldn’t have to peddle their art on a street corner (Yes. The Van Gogh’s of the world did have to do this. Again, they shouldn’t have had to).
I think too many people forget the real costs of what they do on the internet. The internet is not free. Not everyone is out there creating free products for the service of everyone. We pay a fee to get on (or someone pays a fee, if you steal your internet) the internet, and people post a fee to create websites on said internet. That’s how it works. This is not a free institution. I’m not saying I am not a thief in many aspects, but I don’t believe I have ever stolen something I was in the realm to afford.
Leave a Comment