Earlier this week Stan reviewed “Ghosts” by Nine Inch Nails. He gave it a great rating and apparently so did the rest of the music-listening population. Nearly 800,000 copies of the album were moved in the first week, grossing over $1.6 million. Even more incredibly all 2,500 of the “ultra-deluxe” sets at $300 a piece sold out in the first couple days, contributing $750,000 to the $1.6 million total.

Unfortunately for Trent, apparently that isn’t good enough. Everyone has been comparing this release to Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” and leaving it in second. So now, what was initially another great step towards the new future of the record industry, has become nothing more than a pissing competition.

NIN – “Ghosts”:

• 800,000 copies
• $1.6 million in revenue
• Average per copy price $2
• At least 320kbps
• Other packages with additional content available

Radiohead - “In Rainbows”:

• Rumored 1.2 million copies, although no actual reports
• Average per copy price of $6
• $7.2 million (based on per copy price and rumored sales)
• 160kbps

I can understand why it has been frustrating for Trent. He has gone above and beyond the standard in his attempt to offer high quality music and packages as a download. But as everyone continuously points out, he was second to the party. My problem with Trent Reznor is his seemingly ego-fueled comments. These are a few of the comments he made this week in an interview with Australian Broadcasting Corporation:

“Our smallest download was, I think, six times larger than theirs (Radiohead)”

“Let’s get you to pay for a MySpace quality stream as a way to promote a very traditional record sale.”

“What they did right, they surprised the world with a new record and it was available digitally first. What they did wrong, by making it such a low quality thing, not even including artwork, and including things they’ve even said themselves, “Hey, the proper way to get this record is on a CD and that’s coming out in a few months.” and to me that feels insincere and it relies upon the fact that it was “first” and it takes the headlines.”

Here are my problems with his comments.

• iTunes initially sold mp3’s at 128kbps
• iTunes is now selling 256kbps.
• illegal downloads have been 128kbps for years
• majority of illegal downloads are 192kbps
• Radiohead album 160 kbps
• MySpace is 96kbps and above (based on the quality of the mp3 uploaded)
• FM Radio is the equivalent of 96 kbps

Each of these mediums has millions of listeners. Generally, the majority of people don’t care about the quality of the music and most cannot tell the difference between a 128kbps mp3 and those of higher bit-rates anyway. The majority of music now is listened to at a lower than CD quality on lower than optimum headphones from a lower than optimum music player. So what is the moral of the story? If you are giving it away someone will take it. And better yet, Radiohead never even made claims that they were selling the best quality mp3s. In fact, as Reznor mentions, they stated themselves that the CD has better quality. This seems more like Reznor attempting to “take the headlines”.

I do agree with Trent Reznor, he did release a better quality mp3 and better packages, but his website also crashed because of the high quality of the audio and its bandwidth requirements. That is typically why people do not distribute high quality mp3’s on the internet. The cost is just too high to support the bandwidth required to stream and allow for a large quantity of downloads all at once. So yes, you’re approach was good, and it was another step in the right direction. You took the download first model and improved on it, but it was far from perfect.

But I still have one question, why did this have to become a competition?

Related posts:

1. The Gold at the End of “In Rainbows”