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Nine Inch Nails: how to make money on music and participation
In my recent presentation on Creative Commons and the sharing economy I brought up Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznors innovative business model, using – amongst a variety of ingredients – free licensing, turning the album Ghosts I-IV into a bestseller. In this presentation, given by Techdirt‘s Mike Masnick at MidemNet earlier this year, NIN’s strategies – before and after Ghosts IV – are analyzed and broken down to the following formula:
The core of the presentation is the following simple “formula” that is the basis for making money in the music business (and, I’d argue, many other businesses) in the digital era:
Connect With Fans (CwF) + Reason To Buy (RtB) = The Business Model ($$$$)
I warmly recommmend kicking back, hitting full screen and watching this 15 minute presentation from start to end – even if you’re not a NIN fan, or even interested in the future of music business.
More at Techdirt
I can only agree that Mike Masnick has done a great job with this case study. Yet I don’t quite agree with his description of the business model. I would describe it as a freemium business model. This wider term makes it easier to transfer it to other industries.
The following is a video where Trent himself talks about business model experiences, definitely worth a look.
Music Freemium
As Mike Masnick of Techdirt’s life companion, I can say I sympathize with Mike’s plight. He cannot help that he was born with a slight anomaly. Mike, you are way too sensitve about this — grow up now! You look fine and what you lack in performance you more than make up for with bravado! Keep on truckin’. Del
I leraned a lot in these minutes of Mike Macnics presentation and I got som ideas for my own albums and marekting in general. However I would still like to see the artists work better pretected. There is aboslutley no sense in what is happening these days where the the downloads are all for free which makes them cheap. Most of the artists are not marketing geniuses and they should deserve to earn a good living for the amount of work they have to put into a piece of music. There must be a way of stopping the illegal downloading the way it is now. I am sure tha fans don’t mind to pay a reasonabble amount to supprt the favourite artists but there has to be legall protection. Chaos is not good! If an artist is not a mrketing wizzard he shound to have to starve but be helped by the proper system.
David Zuric / Bzzina Productions
David, I think the lesson learned here is that there are ways to profit from filesharing without going to extreme measures (which would be the only way to stop “piracy”) to stop it.
As long as the internet stays less the way it is today, there will be piracy, just like there will probably always be people who like your music, but who would not pay for it. I think the moment people feel better about paying for music because they know the creators get a larger cut, and the moment cheap downloads become easier than finding it on filesharing services, most people will chose to pay.
Yes, you’re absolutely right in saying that not everyone can be a marketing genius, but on the other hand, we can’t turn an entire generation into criminals just because an industry does not want to adapt to their needs.
Yes, I don;t think that general public downloading the music for free are crminials but I am not sure what to call the websites that make money by using artists music for free and ecourage the free downloads in order to make money out of advertising and marketing other products by attracting attention to themsleves with others peoples hard work which they do not pay royalties for..
Are there any regulations covering those? Isn’t WWW simply a media like Radio and TV?