I’ve been thinking some more about my post last week, debating how much you actually earn from selling your music online these days. Coupled with the news that’s been finally weaned from Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’ Album and the fact that the more forthcoming Trent Reznor’s figures on Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Ghosts I-IV’ album, I thought I’d blog further on the topic of what you can earn by giving your music away.

Regarding ‘In Rainbows’,”More than three million people acquired the album,” points out Warner Chappell Music senior vice president of International Legal & Business Affairs Jane Dyball, who admits “I had doubts there was money to be made online”. That figure includes downloads sold across various retailers, and physical packages sold online and through brick-n-mortar stores, and Dyball noted that 1.75 million copies of the physical, full-priced release were shifted. The band may have decided to not give out any specific figures on sales, but that hasn’t stopped people from estimating revenue ($10m in the first week?) and average price paid per album ($5? $8?). Other companies are saying that these figures don’t allow for those who paid $0 for the album (ComScore.com), and Radiohead’s representatives then reply that those figures are inaccurate but don’t give us anything solid to go on. Despite the option of a ‘$0’ price on the official website, between October 10 and November 3 2007, ‘In Rainbows’ was still downloaded from Torrent websites to the tune of 2.3m downloads. So just about no-one can figure it all out once the Torrent numbers are thrown into the mix.

So how about Nine Inch Nails? Front man Trent Reznor must have thought it a huge success. Not only having the respect of your loyal fans and the Music Futurists out there… not only giving the old major labels an e-middle-finger… but also pocketing $1.6 million dollars in revenue in the first week. It must have been a success, as they’ve made the follow-up album ‘The Slip’ available for free download in multiple formats, all DRM-free and encourage you to “remix it, post it on your blog, and share it with strangers”. What an amazing attitude; these will surely go down in history as all-embracing album experiments. It should be right there alongside Michael Jackson being the first black artist with a video on MTV (Billie Jean, 1983). (your random fact for the day )

It wasn’t that easy though – Reznor reported earlier this year that in the two months up to January 2nd, his previous collaboration with Saul Williams consisted of 154,449 people downloading a standard quality of ‘NiggyTardust’ and just 28,322 of them paying the $5 for the higher quality version. In his blog, Reznor suggested that he was “disheartened” by the results.

So, it wasn’t the quality which drove people to illegally download via torrents. Reznor went back to the drawing board and tried a slightly different approach. He now understood the need for a physical product to help launch the album, in fact he released several variations for both CD junkies and hard-core NIN fans (the $300 Ultra-Deluxe Limited Edition of Ghosts I-IV immediately sold out its run of 2500).

At 43 years old, technically on the upper end of Generation-Y (if not Generation-X). Reznor is refreshing, and a true pioneer in his actions. Major labels may be starting to offer 360 deals for some artists, but GIVING the music away? That must be a long way off (if at all).

What would you give to have a Reznor in charge of your career? Well, maybe you can… YOU. Maybe Indies are gaining more and more advantages over the majors and you want to choose this path. If so, then this is the place to subscribe – I’ll be talking a lot more about this over the coming months.

Lee.

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