MORE AND MORE MAJOR RECORDING STARS ARE THUMBING THEIR NOSES AT THE MUSIC INDUSTRY AND DISTRIBUTING THEIR WORK STRICTLY ONLINE
From Madonna to Nine Inch Nails, artists are finding their way around the music industry
By Jeff Miers/NEWS POP MUSIC CRITIC
Updated: 06/29/08 11:37 AM
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- Artist: Nine Inch Nails Album: “Ghosts I-IV,” via the band’s Web site. Price: $5 for a 36-track collection. $300 for deluxe box set edition. Nine-song version free. Result: 800,000 moved in the first week, including all 2,500 of the $300 box sets. The band took in more than a million dollars. NIN gave away another new album for free in the form of the critically lauded “The Slip” shortly after the success of “Ghosts.” NIN’s subsequent tour, and its attendant merchandise sales, will likely make this the band’s most profitable year of its 20-year career.
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It’s gotta hurt. Today’s major-label record industry has spent the past six months wishing it could travel back in time and undo a few fatal mistakes. Was it the moment when it decided to sue Napster, thereby making criminals of its own potential consumer base? Could it have been the manner in which it went about helping to dismantle the independent record stores in this country, by hopping so willingly into bed with “big box store” America? Maybe it shouldn’t have crammed that fifth Creed sound-alike down our throats back in the late ‘90s. Refusing to acknowledge the Internet and the inevitability of file-to-file sharing probably wasn’t the best idea, either.
Whatever the turning point, the bottom line reads the same — the party’s over. There’s a new party going on, and anyone who attended the last one isn’t invited this time. Now, artists from Madonna to Nine Inch Nails are getting creative with ways to distribute their music, bypassing traditional routes and still doing just fine.
The first impossible-to-ignore shot across the bow came courtesy of alternative rock outfit Radiohead. Always good for several hundred-thousand sales of each of its progressively more experimental albums, the British quintet –held by many to be the finest band of its generation – has never masked its contempt for the business side of the music business paradigm. So, it came as no surprise when the band decided to go the independent route, once its deal with EMI had run its course.
It was surprising when the group announced it would offer its new album, “In Rainbows,” on a pay-what-you- like basis via its Web site. More surprising still, most of the millions who grabbed the album left a tip – the average was in the area of $6, despite the fact that they were being offered the thing for free.
Within a week of its digital release in October, “In Rainbows” had sold over a million copies via the band’s Web site, and earned them in the area of $10 million. With no major label taking its (normally disproportionately large) slice of the pie, that means the band made more money in one week as an independent artist than it had from sales royalties over the course of its EMI contract. “In Rainbows” did make it to the tangible retail outlet level, following its removal from the band’s site as a “pay-what-you-like” item, which led many pundits and fans/bloggers to cry foul. Most of them felt that the “In Rainbows” deal was just a publicity stunt. This makes little sense, but has become a popular view.
‘Ghosts’ in the machine
One of the folks holding this view is Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor, who decided to do Radiohead one better and offer his all-instrumental opus “Ghosts IIV” solely via his Web site. A deluxe box set with tons of extra tracks was priced at $300. A nine-track version of the album was offered for download, gratis. The 36-track album-proper was priced at $5. Within a week of its release in March, “Ghosts” had moved 800,000 units –including the complete run of the $300 box sets, 2,500 of which were purchased. Nine Inch Nails took away nearly $2 million for its efforts.
Last month, Reznor took this concept as far as it has ever been taken. He prefaced the release of the all-new, full-band, song-centered NIN album “The Slip” with a letter to his fans. “Thank you for your continued support over the years,” Reznor wrote. “This one’s on me.” A conventional CD release of “The Slip” arrives in mid-July, but by then, most of the folks who want the thing –and have the equipment to handle the large file-size required for the highest possible sound quality –will have been offered the album for free.
Madonna has opted for the indie route herself, although the Material Girl hasn’t offered anything sans pay-day yet. Nor is she likely to. Madge instead signed a $120 million deal with concert promoter Live Nation, to release and distribute her next three albums, promote her tours and handle licensed merchandise exclusively.
Now, Brit-pop terrors Oasis and Stevie Wonder wannabes Jamiroquai have announced they’ll be going it alone as well. Both will offer their forthcoming albums directly to their fans via the Internet, on a “pay-what-you-like” basis.
They join an ever-growing list of artists more than willing to take on the burdens of recording, promoting and distributing themselves, including the mega-popular Green Day, which recently “went indie” under the nom de plume the Foxboro Hot Tubs. Newly reformed British psychedelic-pop outfit the Verve has formed its own label too, although it will still use a major for distribution services, when its new album is released in August.
Heck, even acts as mainstream as the Eagles and Jimmy Buffet are effectively independents at this point.
The price of free
Not all musicians find this new strain of altruism all that appealing. KISS bassist and exuberant capitalist Gene Simmons, for example, finds the whole notion of giving music away anathema to the rock-as- marketing idiom he helped pioneer in the ’70s.
“The record industry is dead,” Simmons pointed out –well past the point of redundancy –to the Daily Star earlier in June. “It’s six feet underground and... the fans have done this. They’ve decided to download and file share.” You don’t say!
Simmons, in the same interview, called out Radiohead, NIN and Green Day for the their “give it away” tendencies. They’ve “contributed to the demise of the industry,” Simmons claims.
Interestingly, there’s still an awful lot of money changing hands out there. Much to the chagrin of major label types, Simmons and the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), it’s all going directly to the artists who’ve been able to tap into a direct relationship with their fans. The most savvy among this group, even after covering overhead, are making much more money than they ever did “working for the corporation.”
The middle man has finally been deemed superfluous.
Shhh... listen. I think I hear the world’s smallest violin scraping out a bitter elegy...
