2500 Trent Reznor fans can’t be wrong
Nine Inch Nails has gotten a slew of publicity for a tiered sales system for its new release, “Ghosts I-IV.” The album, a 36-track collection of instrumental meanderings and riffs, is a novelty; but, as we’ve repeatedly seen in the brave new world of the record industry, the lesson is this: When you can’t sell the music, sell the way you sell the music. (See also, Paul McCartney et al., and Starbucks.)
Ten years ago, Trent Reznor put out a couple of good albums of what was at the time some fairly challenging music, and had a hell of a stage show. His popularity has since waned.
I don’t have the SoundScan figures at hand, but the RIAA certifications for NIN follow the usual half-life trend for once-popular artists: Each successive release does roughly half the sales of the previous one. (This process generally continues until the artist gets around to doing a standards collection or some variant thereof.) In this case, NIN’s last certification was merely gold, for “With Teeth,” which could mean actual sales of as little as 400,000 copies.
Anyway, for this album, fans have a number of choices: You can download a limited selection of the 36 total tracks for free, or get a) the whole set for $5 as a digital download; b) a couple of actual CDs for $10, c) a deluxe edition with a DVD and Blu-ray disc with all the individual instrumental tracks for each song and more; or d) a super deluxe edition with all of that, plus everything on vinyl, some pretty pictures, and other things, all for $300.
This last has gotten all the attention—here and here and here, among other places—mostly focusing on how Reznor made a quick $750,000 on the super deluxe edition alone. We can applaud his business acumen, but in the end it represents merely 2500 fans, which isn’t that big of a deal for a guy who used to go quadruple platinum.
It’s much more indicative of the lingering financial opportunities available even to faded stars; in the good old days, of course, Reznor might have grossed $750,000 from mersh alone at a couple of shows. And the whole affair, as with the Starbucks artists, smacks of the novelty.
I don’t mean to make it sound like commercial success is a be-all or end-all. It’s not. But there is a pattern we’ve seen repeatedly with certain stars.
Their talent fades or they become self-indulgent and lazy; album sales tank. They then attack their record company for poor marketing or worse. They then go into the wilderness and figure out ways to extract more money from a narrowed fan base. That’s where Reznor is now. The next step, after even this level of fan support fades, is to “get back to basics” and put out a release of songs in one’s original fan-friendly mode, go out on tour, and ride that for one or two final paydays.
For decades artists have marketed themselves in various ways outside their record companies; that what those TV ads for repackaged greatest-hits sets for established artists are sometimes doing. “Ghosts I-IV” is just a modern twist on that gambit.
The real test of the digital future of the business is going to come when an artist we’ve never heard of puts their music online for free and, a year or so later, is playing arenas while never having had a record company.
3 Comments so far
Leave a reply
Your take here seems overly critical of what you characterize as Reznor’s desire to market an aging product [NIN]. Instead, I would argue that the Ghosts project is as an artistic endeavor that record labels would have never accepted as commercially viable, not a new way to make that paycheck.
Reznor has expressed his dissatisfaction with label oversight many times in the past, most recently with Interscope in late 2007: Frustrated with the label’s price gouging in Austraila, he encouraged fans to pirate his album. Shortly thereafter, after splitting with Interscope, he said:
“I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different.”
Another quote on the Ghosts site reads:
“[Ghosts] is a wildly varied body of music that we’re able to present to the world in ways the confines of a major record label would never have allowed.”
In light of these actions it certainly seems like Reznor is seeking something other than a new way to milk his fans for money and that ‘final payday.’ Certainly, he makes a good buck doing it, but he also aims to weaken the bars of the major label system at the same time. And, what better way to do this than to make big bucks without them?
Thanks for taking the time to argue the point. Of course Reznor should be able to create the sort of music he wants; to his credit, he was one of the folks who helped loosen up an extremely calcified industry in the years before “Nevermind.”
Still, 18 years on, in a constricted industry, he’s still a pop artist with, one assumes, a pop artist’s contract, and he’s not selling records any more. I respect him, Prince, Wilco, Neil Young … Woody Allen, even, who is in much the same boat. No one’s stopping them from being “creative.” But in a way what they want is to “be creative” *and* “get the usual advances and marketing and tour support.”
So, at that point, he’s doing the best thing for him and the label. Everyone’s happy. But: What I’ve heard of “Ghosts” is sweet and lulling … and commercially and aesthetically unexciting. As I said in the beginning of the post, I think that he’s doing well on the novelty appeal of this release, but his next batch of instrumental snippets won’t be as successful.
At which point, he can keep at it, but at a certain point, being in effect his own label, he’s going to balk at releasing the stuff too, right?
“Reznor might have grossed $750,000 from mersh alone at a couple of shows.”
Uh, yeah. Billboard indicates NIN sold as many albums as JayZ did last year, and that includes a #2 debut, and better than most of the newer rock acts, Foo Fighters among them. NIN also had 4 consecutive #1 songs on the Billboard Modern Rock charts and had a #1 Dance Single a month ago. It’s hard for any artist, and I mean artist, to make much of a dent in a world where the top albums of the year are karaoke contest winners and soundtracks to Nickelodeon shows.
Something happened to you in the nineties that scarred the inner child deep inside you, and Nine Inch Nails is the soundtrack to that inner Lifetime movie I think. Irregardless of the psychological issues at hand, relative to other rock acts, Nine Inch Nails still ranks near the top, in both record sales and touring.
This record was recorded in 10 days this past December as an experimental kind of thing. It was released and within 2 days makes 750,000 just on the deluxe discs alone. This collection of radio and tween unfriendly experimental tunes will garner roughly 200,000 or so downloads in the end and will add another 1 to 1.5 million profit, perhaps more. This profit, minus the cost, will go directly to the artist, all from a project a major label would never have released in the first place.
Let’s review: NIN still relevant after all these years…This is kind of a big deal…And your writing here is nothing more than whipped bitterness and conjecture. Good day to you sir!