How is it that the two top selling MP3 players are the two most DRM-encumbered? I think, though, that a survey would be more relevant. Something simple, like "What Do you use to listen to music on the road?" It would answer my nagging doubts: How many of those iPods go to repeat buyers? How many people use something that's not an MP3 player to play MP3's?

I fall into the latter category, the wifest into the former. I use my blackberry for music playing (with a decent pair of headphones and a decent music player, that scrobbles). I spent a long time worrying about what type of MP3 player to buy, so that DRM wouldn't be an issue. Then Amazon MP3 launched, and it all became moot. There's now (almost) no MP3 I can't find on Amazon, DownloadPunk, or Bleep. My music player is a MSD, so there's no worry about adding files from multiple machines.  I don't have to use special software (yes, iTunes is special in a short bus kinda way) to load music either.  Any fears of running out of battery are assuaged by the fact that i can charge it off any usb port.

The new Nine Inch Nails album is fantastic. It carries on the path from The Fragile to Lost Highway and Still, the path that was lost when Trent took 3 years off and then released With_Teeth. Trent's said that Ghosts wouldn't have been possible to release on a major label, which is easily believable. The songs aren't particularly catchy, (aside from 3 Ghosts I), and they take time to absorb. It's the kind of music I love, the kind that takes a while to take hold, and that rewards focused attention and repeated listening.

The release of the album, with a free section, and tiered pricing iterates on the low purchase rate of Niggy Tardust, which was released on the same model as In_Rainbows. I think Trent's experience with Saul Williams is not as instructive as it seems, since it seems the majority interested in hearing the album were NIN fans, not Saul's fans. A lot of my problem with the napster-bittorrent method of obtaining music is that it's easy to download the whole album to find out if you like it, but then difficult to convince yourself to go and pay for something you already "have". Niggy Tardust fell into the same trap, for people unfamiliar with saul's music.

The Ghosts experiment eases the issue by making a full quarter of the album readily available, and then adding value for higher pricing tiers. It's a lesson in Market Segmentation, so that people who just love the music can get in the door for $5 (or less for single tracks on amazon MP3), while people who have the money and appreciate physical discs and booklets can get more at a higher tier. It will be interesting to see how much better this album fares than Niggy Tardust did, although as slashdot points out the limited edition collector's box has already done well. The immediately foreseeable issue is that a) Not all albums have as easy a distinction to make between free sections and the whole album, and b) Most artists can't sell out a $300 box set in two days. The former might solve itself, though, if the experiment works to the level of influencing album releases, the way double sided LP's and cassettes once did.

Rock should be less like a mall and more like a yard sale.

There's been a lot of pontificating about the new Radiohead album, and how it's hastening the demise of the recording industry. Largely because of Nine Inch Nails's announcement a few days later, and other bands jumping on the bandwagon immediately afterward. It's cool, that's for sure. The more the merrier. But the concept of setting your own price is something Jonah Matranga has been doing since onlinedrawing's jonahpster, and that you can still do in his current shop1. Radiohead's success still depended, for a long time, on the music industry.

The death knell for the industry was 2005's CYHSY, who rose to sudden popularity based on a solid review from Said the Gramaphone, and sold hundreds of thousands of self-printed CD's without any assistance from a major label's marketing budget. Hailed as the next Arcade Fire, not so much because of their sound, but because of their lightening fast rise to popularity without wasting a lot of money.

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy Radiohead (I Might Be Wrong is one of my favorite live albums), but their primary skill is following the right trends. Their fans are often oblivious to the aphex twin influences, or the truly independent bands that have paved their way.

Smart new artists aren't wasting their time trying to get noticed by labels. They know that the scene is moving. They're building myspace friends and selling shows in towns they've never been to. I get albums emailed from artists like Nato Caliph just because I have a blog. Nato is doing more to hasten the death of the RIAA by sidestepping the entire system, than Radiohead's little temper tantrum and to-be-released box set capitulation2 .

1. base price ± what you feel it's worth
2. Radiohead has announced that they plan on signing a deal with a record label to release in_rainbows in physical form. It doesn't get much press because it doesn't sound quite so defiant.

• Rick Rubin, Radiohead, and the record industry at Invisible Oranges is everything I've been saying. every Warp should have a Bleep, the loudness wars and shitty albums killed the music industry long before downloads got to it, and Trent Reznor is one of the few people who gets that the download edition of an album should have its own appeal.
  

• Breast cancer will remain a cash cow until something comes along to replace it, another illness common among upper middle class citizens with the money to pay for new and expensive treatment, something to feed the greed of corporations who use breast cancer as a pubic relations tool.

  from WonderLand or Not
  I feel no shame pimping my own pink for october theme (from last year) to people who are into branding and memes, but it's just not a vehicle I see as effective.