NIN Ghosts I-IV: Amazon’s Bestselling Album of 2008 (Was Released Under A Creative Commons License!)

Written by:

January 12th, 2009 | Category: musicNeutral's Blog

Nine Inch Nail’s Ghosts I-IV is the Amazon’s Bestselling album of 2008! Ghosts was released last March under a Creative Commons license: allowing anyone to legally copy, distribute, display, and perform the work. The first nine tracks of the album were, and still are, available for download on the band’s site. So despite the fact that Ghosts could be legally downloaded (Trent Reznor himself even uploaded the album to bittorrent sites), it is shocking that it was able to sell so many copies on Amazon.

Here are some possibilities for why Ghosts might have done so well:

  • The reasonable $5.00 album price for 36 tracks?
  • The immense publicity surrounding this free release last March?
  • The band’s reputation?

Further, I would be curious if Amazon’s data is based on units sold or total earnings? But even if the $5.00 album price is responsible for selling a greater number of units, similarly interesting is Radiohead’s In Rainbows coming in at #11 ($8.99 for 10 tracks).

3 comments

3 Comments so far

  1. musicNeutral : encourage free music / donate to musicians » Blog Archive » The Trent Reznor Case Study: by Michael Masnick March 18th, 2009 2:46 pm

    [...] NIN has connected with their fans to such a degree that NIN fans respect Reznor and want to support his initiative. This can help explain how Ghosts I-IV brought in 1.6million in the first week and was Amazon’s best selling album of 2008. [...]

  2. musicNeutral : Beyond Free Music Culture » Blog Archive » Amazon & iTunes Cut Music Prices March 23rd, 2009 9:08 am

    [...] decrease in the price point may make music reasonable enough to buy. Remember that on Amazon the bestselling album of 2008 was being sold for [...]

  3. Viepjeall August 1st, 2011 12:29 pm

    Drug War Funds order ambien online If used on a long-term basis, a person can be dependent on Ambien. http://www.thegirlyghosthunters.com/ – ambien online pharmacy

Leave a reply