Update: NIN grosses $750,000 overnight
An update to yesterday's post: the $300 deluxe box set is sold out, according to the Nine Inch Nails Web site. The band made only 2,500 copies of the deluxe set, which means that they've already grossed $750,000. In preorders. In less than a day. That should be more than enough to cover the cost of manufacturing this set, and probably the initial runs of the lower-priced physical sets as well, plus recording costs (a high-budget major-label release might cost $100,000 to record). And since NIN is no longer on a label, every dollar of Ghosts sales from now on goes into the band's pocket.
Of course, not every artist is NIN, with a 15+-year career and a core of extremely devoted fans, but any artist with similar credentials in an unhappy recording contract will certainly be considering whether to follow Trent's lead.
Matt Rosoff is an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, where he covers Microsoft's consumer products and corporate news. He's written about the technology industry since 1995, and reviewed the first Rio MP3 player for CNET.com in 1998. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mattrosoff. 
