trent reznor

The $300 "ultra deluxe edition" of Nine Inch Nails' Ghosts I-IV, limited to 2500 copies, sold out in a couple days (I believe released Sunday, no longer available this morning). There are some manufacturing costs, but they don't appear to be using any precious materials. So if an artist typically makes $1.60 on a $15.99 CD sale, profit from sales of the limited edition already matches profit from a CD selling hundreds of thousands of copies.

Convinced the current music business infrastructure (requiring artists to rely on labels) is broken, Nine Inch Nails front man, Trent Reznor, released his band's new album Sunday night via his official site, marking yet another business experiment for this artist in the changing music market.

Last year, Reznor announced his band would free itself from record labels, and it looks like he’s following through with his promise. He released the new album, Ghosts I - IV (Ghosts Volumes One though Four), Sunday at 6 PM, says the LA Times' Extended Play blog.

The musician's experiment relies on the theory that customers would be willing to pay for the music if there's extra value included, so he released the album in various packages. The first 9 tracks are available for free in a high-quality, DRM-free MP3 format, and a 40 page PDF book and a digital extras pack with wallpapers, icons, and more come included.

Everything in the free package is included in the 5$ set, but the rest of the album gets thrown in, and it's available in a variety of DRM-free formats including 320 kbps MP3, FLAC Lossless, and Apple Lossless.