It's been a long time coming, but I finally feel like it's time to share my feelings on the RIAA and the music "piracy" issue that pervades society. What motivated this you ask? Well, first of all, with the release of In Rainbows and The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggytardust!, internet distribution of music escaped the realms of Itunes and file-sharing. No longer was music controlled strictly by a label and sold at low quality and unreasonable prices. On top of that, my inbox has recently been flooded by emails from BAYU, Be Aware You're Uploading, an organization the University of Michigan established to help students prevent being sued by the team of lawyers the RIAA has unleashed on College music fans.
As everyone knows, the RIAA has lately been targeting college students in their fight against "piracy." The reason for this? Because the RIAA can easily get the names behind the IP by threatening a college with a lawsuit. What about suing music fans sounds like a good idea when it is them you are trying to sell to? Fucking stupid. On top of that, college students are much smarter than any executive at a record label. It's easy as hell to upload music to any kind of file-sharing service that you please without anyone knowing it's you. It's called a proxy if you didn't know. So why are they suing kids they can't stop. Two reasons. First, it scares the shit out of people. But, it hasn't stopped anyone really. So why else? Well, money. They find someone uploading, they send a letter threatening to sue and demanding $700 for every song. Contained in the letter is the total amount they are demanding and a place to send it. If one does not pay them off, a lawsuit is filed. If one of the RIAA's victims responds with a lawyer of his own, the suit is dropped. A college student is perfect for this scam, they come from a rich enough family to pay the demanded settlement, but they rarely have the money...

It's been a long time coming, but I finally feel like it's time to share my feelings on the RIAA and the music "piracy" issue that pervades society. What motivated this you ask? Well, first of all, with the release of In Rainbows and The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggytardust!, internet distribution of music escaped the realms of Itunes and file-sharing. No longer was music controlled strictly by a label and sold at low quality and unreasonable prices. On top of that, my inbox has recently been flooded by emails from BAYU, Be Aware You're Uploading, an organization the University of Michigan established to help students prevent being sued by the team of lawyers the RIAA has unleashed on College music fans.
As everyone knows, the RIAA has lately been targeting college students in their fight against "piracy." The reason for this? Because the RIAA can easily get the names behind the IP by threatening a college with a lawsuit. What about suing music fans sounds like a good idea when it is them you are trying to sell to? Fucking stupid. On top of that, college students are much smarter than any executive at a record label. It's easy as hell to upload music to any kind of file-sharing service that you please without anyone knowing it's you. It's called a proxy if you didn't know. So why are they suing kids they can't stop. Two reasons. First, it scares the shit out of people. But, it hasn't stopped anyone really. So why else? Well, money. They find someone uploading, they send a letter threatening to sue and demanding $700 for every song. Contained in the letter is the total amount they are demanding and a place to send it. If one does not pay them off, a lawsuit is filed. If one of the RIAA's victims responds with a lawyer of his own, the suit is dropped. A college student is perfect for this scam, they come from a rich enough family to pay the demanded settlement, but they rarely have the money to hire a lawyer to fight the case. Cool, huh?! There's more! Many of the songs being sued over are uploaded to these sites by record companies. Why? Because people downloading songs is a great free advertising technique. The more people who hear a record, the more people who buy it. And to compliment their wonderful advertising they encode markers into the files they upload to make it easier to find these student targets. These wonderful record labels are stealing money from college students whose future depends on paying their fucking tuition. Included in the letter that the RIAA has been sending to college students is suggestions on how to pay the settlement they demand. Believe it or not, one of their suggestions is to drop out of college and start a career without a degree. The RIAA has effectively admitted that they want to ruin your life for their bottom line.
And all of this because they are stuck in the past, standing behind outdated formats that consumers no longer want, for prices they don't want to pay. The cd has effectively become outdated by the internet, and even itunes has effectively become outdated. At $.99 per song, it would take approximately $32,226 to fill an ipod with music. No one has that kind of money to dedicate to music, so what is one to do? Well, Oink. This recently shut down bit-torrent site provided music lovers with exactly what they wanted high quality music free of DRM (Digital Rights Management). No legal venue for purchasing music offered. Oink had a quality requirement for uploaded files with a minimum bitrate of 192 (better than itunes or any other music purchasing site), with most uploading at 320 or with a lossless format like FLAC. If you couldn't find the song or album you want, you could request it, and someone would upload it. You can't find that kind of service anywhere, so why the fuck would you buy music legally. And that raises another question, if record companies offered this, would people pay for it? And what have people in the music business done to address the issue of overpriced, low quality music?
Radiohead addressed the issue of the price, by allowing you to name your own price. This proved successful for the band, with an average selling price of $4 for each download. This may seem like a low selling price for an entire album, but when you take out the record label's cut, the manufacturer's cut, shipping, and the store's cut, the price becomes incredibly reasonable. $4 going straight to the artist who makes the amazing art that has enriched our lives. That's more than 4 times the share of the profits that artists get for CD's sold in stores. With sales estimates as high as 1.2 million copies online, this proved to be quite the financial victory for the band. But In Rainbows failed to be the record to revolutionize the decaying business model used by the major record labels, simply because it wasn't different from the business model of the record labels. The initial downloading was done purely as advertising. Radiohead sold a low quality copy of the record in order to get word of mouth advertising on top of the inevitable press coverage that resulted from this unorthodox release. But they had no intention of releasing the record without a conventional release to follow. Anyone who preferred having a cd or a high quality copy was not told that a cd was forthcoming. As far as anyone knew, the online release was the only release there was going to be. So people who chose to pay for the online release now were faced with the cost of buying the cd. Instead of revolutionizing music distribution methods, Radiohead fucked their fans by making them pay for their advertising campaign.
Saul Williams addressed the issue of price and quality with the release of The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggytardust! (available at www.niggytardust.com). Saul Williams and Trent Reznor work together to make an amazing record and decide to release it themselves, digitally. We offer the entire record free (as in totally free to the visitor - we pay bandwidth costs) as 192 MP3s, or for $5 you can choose higher fidelity versions and feel good about supporting the artist directly. They offer the entire record free (as in totally free to the visitor - they pay bandwidth costs) as 192 MP3s, or for $5 you could choose higher fidelity versions and feel good about supporting the artist directly. They openly declared their intentions to release a cd version of the album at a later time. Unfortunately, this doesn't prove to be very financially successful, and somewhat disappointing release overall. As Trent put it on the official Nine Inch Nails website,
"Here's what I was thinking: Fans are interested in music as soon as it's available (that's a good thing, remember) and usually that's a leak from the label's manufacturing plants. Offering the record digitally as its first appearance in the marketplace eliminates that problem. I thought if you offered the whole record free at reasonable quality - no strings attached - and offered a hassle free way to show support that clearly goes straight to the artists who made it at an unquestionably low price people would "do the the right thing". I know, I know…
Well, now I DO know and you will too.
Saul's previous record was released in 2004 and has sold 33,897 copies.
As of 1/2/08,
154,449 people chose to download Saul's new record.
28,322 of those people chose to pay $5 for it, meaning:
18.3% chose to pay.

...Keep in mind not one cent was spent on marketing this record. The only marketing was Saul and myself talking as loudly as we could to anybody that would listen.
If 33,897 people went out and bought Saul's last record 3 years ago (when more people bought CDs) and over 150K - five times as many - sought out this new record, that's great - right?
I have to assume the people knowing about this project must either be primarily Saul or NIN fans, as there was very little media coverage outside our direct influence. If that assumption is correct - that most of the people that chose to download Saul's record came from his or my own fan-base - is it good news that less than one in five feel it was worth $5? I'm not sure what I was expecting but that percentage - primarily from fans - seems disheartening.
Add to that: we spent too much (correction, I spent too much) making the record utilizing an A-list team and studio, Musicane fees, an old publishing deal, sample clearance fees, paying to give the record away (bandwidth costs), and nobody's getting rich off this project."

Without an already famous name like Radiohead (have you ever heard of Saul Williams?), the record failed to bring in the kind of scratch that Radiohead did. Why buy a record from an unknown artist when you can get it for free? So what is left for the musician who doesn't want to release a record through a label but still wants to get paid for his work?
In comes the new Nine Inch Nails album, Ghosts I-IV (available at ghosts.nin.com). Ghosts consists of four 9 track volumes of instrumental songs. The record was released in five different versions at different prices:
Ghosts I - free
Contains the first nine tracks, available for free online from either the official Nine Inch Nails's site or officially from various torrent trackers, including The Pirate Bay. Contains a 40 page PDF booklet as well as a digital package of wallpapers, website banners and icons.
Digital Release - $5 to download directly from NIN, free from third parties
The entire album in DRM-free formats, including high bitrate MP3, Flac Lossless and Apple Lossless available for download. Contains the 40 page PDF booklet as well as a digital package of wallpapers, website banners and icons.
Two-Disc Release - $10
Include two CDs and a sixteen-page booklet. Set to ship on 8 April, 2008. Includes a web key for an immediate download of the album (see Digital Release above.)
Deluxe Edition - $75
A deluxe edition includes 2 discs, 1 data DVD containing multitrack files for use with audio editing software, a 48-page hardback book with photographs, and a Blu-ray Disc with Ghosts I-IV in high-definition 96 kHz 24-bit stereo and accompanying slideshow. Set to ship on 1 May, 2008. Pre-orders available at ghosts.nin.com and ainr.com. Also includes a web key for an immediate download of the album (see Digital Release above.)
Ultra-Deluxe Limited Edition - $300
Includes all features in the deluxe release (including the free download) as well as 4LP vinyl, and two exclusive limited edition Giclée prints. Limited to 2,500 pieces, numbered and signed by Trent Reznor. Pre-orders of this edition sold out within hours of its release.

The album is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license. What does this mean? You cannot be sued for uploading this album or giving it away any way you want, as long as you don't make money off of it. Hell, you can even use the multitrack files available to make your own remixes (NIN has even put up a website dedicated to fanmade remixes, remix.nin.com). This freedom to do whatever the fuck you want with the music you buy was truly the first revolutionary use of Internet distribution by a major contemporary artist.
And how has this release done? In three days, the Ultra-Deluxe Limited Edition sold out. That works out to be a three day gross of 750,000. Even after material costs, that is more than enough to recover recording costs. That leaves the cost of every other download going to the bottom line.
In summation, we have music being released in a way that satisfies the needs and desires of both the artist and the music listening public in a profitable way. What could be the problem with this? It's too fucking popular. Three times as many people as predicted downloaded the album and within minutes, NIN's servers were down (after obtaining my copy, I uploaded it to a bit torrent site in hopes of facilitating others ability to get the record right away after the server crash. This is what prompted the flood of e-mails from BAYU). And this was with absolutely no advertising, not even an announcement before the release. This can be explained by the fact that NIN is a huge band with a very dedicated following, but this is not enough. Trent provided what people wanted, a cheap collection of great music at a high quality. But he didn't make his previous mistake that he made with Saul's record. You can't get the whole album for free, just a preview. If you like it, you can spend less than the cost of a cup of coffee and get the whole thing. And if you want more than just the album, you can pay more and get one of the deluxe packages. And not just a couple of bonus tracks, but stuff that goes well beyond what most artists offer.
So where does this leave the record industry? How can they revolutionize and embrace the possibilities of the Internet instead of fighting them? That is a good question that I'm quite sure I don't have all the answers for. But trying to force people to buy crap they don't want for more than it is worth will not work, because now people have alternatives. Until the record companies can adapt, and offer the fans what they want, they have no chance. The revolution is coming, and the record companies better get ready for it.