Creatively selling content on the Internet: Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails

Mar 06, 2008

It is becoming increasingly difficult to sell content, especially non-tangible content like text, video and audio over the Internet because so much variety is available for free. Free content is irresistible to most surfers even if they have to compromise on quality a bit.

But giving your content for free doesn’t mean earning no money. Recently a rock group called Radiohead offered its music at whatever price its fans wanted to pay and became a huge success. Their album "In Rainbows" made record sales (in terms of artists themselves selling and promoting their music on the Internet) and now even in the conventional format (CDs is being sold in the retail stores) they are making brisk sales. This album was not as big a success as their previous album but compared to the current music sales trends in the market it was a decent business.

The Radiohead had an advantage compared to a lesser-known artist trying to sell his or her creation over the Internet: they are a know British rock band. Nonetheless there are many artists as well as music companies that are not doing well following the conventional music business model.

In another such fete Nine Inch Nails is offering free music over the Internet accompanied with varied formats of prices. For instance, you can download the first nine tracks for free and for $5 you can download all 36 tracks. And this doesn’t mean they’re not making sales in the conventional sense. At various other prizes one can buy CDs, DVDs, and a $300 "ultra-delux limited edition pack" can get you an assortment of the band’s paraphernalia, with the music of course.

I think this is a very creative strategy to sell content on the Internet. The Internet audience is used to getting stuff for free and then paying for it later on, if it finds it worth paying for. Besides, instead of people not listen to your tracks or pirating them, it is a lot better to offer the music for free so that you can lay ground for further/future sales. By doing this you are not forcing your fans to engage in illegal activities in order to listen to your music.

The traditional content companies should follow the same flexible model over the Internet. A great thing about digital content is, once it is created, there are practically no production costs and you can create as many versions as possible. Even if you create one music file it can be downloaded by millions of fans, whether they pay or not.