
Amazon's Best-Selling Album Download of 2008 Was Available for Free - peter123
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/nin_creative_commons-licensed.php
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GHFigs
While I don't dispute the success of the album, I don't think this is as
significant as it sounds. While the whole album was licensed for free
distribution, only the first 9 of 36 tracks were available for free from the
official source. For the rest, a person would have to either buy it or obtain
it through file sharing networks where it would have been available _anyway_.

~~~
ensignavenger
"it would have been available anyway."

Yes, but not legally- some have a moral aversion to breaking the law.

~~~
jamesbritt
FTFA : "In March 2008, Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails released the first part
of Ghosts I-IV via BitTorrent, and released all four albums under the Creative
Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license."

So how would it be illegal to get it from some file-sharing site?

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dantheman
ensignavenger was referring to this statment:

> obtain it through file sharing networks where it would have been available
> anyway.

when mentioning the legality.

Or to rephrase, if you looked on the filesharing network it would have been
there regardless of the licensing, and some people would not download it if
they weren't legally allowed to.

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mdasen
This is one thing I'll never quite understand. Do users who buy it consider it
a tip or donation? This is where economics goes from being a science to being
an art. Economics is a great discipline, but it really doesn't explain human
weirdness and how that weirdness comes into play with money.

~~~
sh1mmer
Presumably not everyone realised that it was available for free. I imagine
many of them bought it as it was rising up the charts fueled by people who had
listened to it for free buying it (as a tip or a donation).

It seems like this model is still mostly a buzz machine which won't
necessarily scale.

~~~
Xichekolas
Well it also helped that the price of Ghosts was very reasonable. People who
wanted to spend $300 on the limited edition everything-plus-trents-nail-
clippings set could, and those of us that just wanted the mp3s only had to
spend $5.

I think if most bands sold album mp3s at $5, people would be more likely to
buy them. When I have to spend $10-20 for an album it starts to become worth
the time to find it on a torrent tracker.

Edit: Meant to add that I did know how to get it for free, I paid for it
because $5 is worth it for an uber-fast, high quality download, rather than
dealing with bad rips and low bitrates and such.

~~~
jrp
I think that if albums were $5, 3 times the albums might be sold, but more
dollars would not be spent. I don't see anything but punishment stopping
illegal downloads.

~~~
notauser
Price vs demand relationships are complex and usually not liner.

Over a small range you can work out a price elasticity of demand. For
something like bread it might be near zero (as price goes up, demand stays
nearly constant) while for something like chocolate covered dwarf hookers it
might approach infinity (as price goes up, demand drops to zero really fast).

With a PED of less than one, cutting prices will lower revenue. With a PED of
greater than one cutting prices will increase revenue.

Music PED varies by band more than you might expect. For unknown bands it is
huge, for established bands with large fan bases it is very, very low. If you
are a U2 fanatic then there are no effective substitutes for your purchase so
price is not relevant, whilst for X IN INTERESTING_INDY_BANDS there will be
many other possibilities so you my as well pick the cheapest.

(Right now if you have a product with a negative PED you should be working
hard on it. Anything (like VOIP, or rice, or medical care) where demand goes
up as real price goes up (due to deflation/drop in income levels) is a good
bet in a recession.)

~~~
graemep
Last para confusers price elasticity of demand with income elasticity of
demand/ What you eventually say could be interpreted to mean something like
Giffen goods, which I am sure is not what you meant.:

<http://moneyterms.co.uk/price-elasticity/> <http://moneyterms.co.uk/income-
elasticity/> <http://moneyterms.co.uk/giffen-good/>

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notirk
I knew the album was free and still purchased it, although not from Amazon,
from the site NIN set up. I definitely still purchase albums of bands I like,
why wouldn't you?

~~~
ensignavenger
I would likely purchase some other product from a band that I like- say, a
T-Shirt (which in turn advertises that band) vs. buying a music download that
I could get for free. But the idea is the same- I am still supporting the
musicians with my wallet.

~~~
teej
How many band t-shirts vs "free albums" do you own?

~~~
Retric
Me,

    
    
      band t-shirts (zero)
      "free albums" (zero)
      albums of any type (zero)
    

Can we please spend less time talking about the music industry it's a small
industry which most people don't buy anything from. Why do people find it so
interesting?

~~~
teej
It's a small industry?

"The total annual net income from members of the RIAA is reported to be $11.5
billion" -- RIAA - Wikipedia
([http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Recording_Industry...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Recording_Industry_Association_of_America&oldid=262317230))

Wrong.

~~~
Retric
It's extremely profitable, but that does not mean it's large. IBM made $10.4
billion USD it's got 386,558 people which is a large company, but the
recording industry is significantly smaller than that.

PS: Your iPod is not part of the recording industry, the local band that's
waiting for their break is not part of the recording industry even though they
would like to be. The recording industry is focused on promoting and selling
music and while they make a lot of money they don't really use vary many
people.

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allyt
I think what this is missing is that for people who know how to use
BitTorrent, _all_ the top albums were available for free. Hence, officially
releasing it was a sign of good will which only increased their sales.

