Comments on: Trent Reznor: 'So you want to make money on the Web'

In a post that could easily explain the emerging open-source software business model, Nine Inch Nails lead details how to make money in music.

[Benjamin_Reed_562]

One difference though, is that the music (code) is available completely. Open core adds addition tracks only available on the "special edition" -- whereas by your analogy, Trent is saying, essentially, "all of the code should be freely available, but if you package it in an appliance you give the community something to buy into" or, "add rock star service on top of the open-source product."

His value adds are all about adding value in unique packaging, but the music is always freely available to everyone.

Still, I think there's a lot of similarity between what Trent's trying to do and open-source. Since he's a software geek too, that doesn't surprise me too much... =)

In fact, only one of the models is open core ("Make a premium download available that includes high-resolution versions"), the rest is based on ancillary markets. On the other hand, music and emotionally-enhanced merchandise have different use and redistribution patterns compared to software, so the analogy is weak (but interesting nevertheless).

[pentest]

Do you realize that trent offered his last record for free, including in better than CD formats? Then he sold them as packaged CD's? The one before that(Ghosts) was $5 and that was for high quality compressed, FLAC and better than CD formats. The CD's he sold for Ghosts, were limited edition with lots of extras in the package.

[jgehlbach]

What an excellent load of logical fallacies! Let's start at the top -- which is metaphorically the bottom. A shaky foundation it is indeed.

0. Music and software are not the same.

1. You provide no evidence to support your claim that Open Core is "primary business model for open-source software". Nobody will accept as evidence anything that you wrote years ago.

2. Trent says "give your music away as high-quality DRM-free MP3s". If music were just like software (which it's not, see point zero) then this would map to giving your software away with all the features intact. The software that open-core vendors give away is more analogous to DRM-free MP3s that are mastered with the bass and percussion removed. The fan is free to approximate those parts in GarageBand and re-export, but it's easier just to pay for a DRM-encumbered version with all the instruments present and played just as the artist intended.

3. Trent says of the pay-for extras, "make them by hand, sign them, make them unique". This maps to nothing in the open-core model -- selling software licenses is inherently about making the software one time and selling the right to use many identical copies. A pure services business model is much closer since every training class, every support ticket, and every consulting engagement is unique.

4. Also of the pay-for extras, Trent says, "make them something YOU would want to have as a fan". Here you imply that a fan's motivation to buy is substantially similar to a software user's motivation to buy. The two are actually very different. A fan feels a connection to the artist or his work and buys the premium nicknack because of its emotional value. A software user, as you say, "just want[s] to get on with [his or her] day", and buys the premium version because of its utility value.

5. Red Hat does not sell licenses. I believe you're thinking of the packaged binaries and convenient and timely access to support and updates that make up the bulk of RHAT's revenues. If you don't understand what the Red Hat model is, then you really should not be representing yourself as any kind of authority on open-source business models.

6a. Open-core vendors make it easy for customers to leave? Bull excrement. If your pay-for feature was compelling enough for me to pony up the dough, then that means I couldn't find a suitable free (libre) alternative. Since the subscription-licensing model means that the software stops working when I stop paying, I'm pretty much over a barrel until somebody else makes a free (libre) alternative or you deign to bestow the pay-for feature upon the community.

6b. Reiterating: Under the subscription-licensing model, the software itself stops working if the user stops paying. This catch removes the user's freedom to pay once and use the version she paid for forever. I broke this point out separately because so few people seem to understand it. I was talking to a journalist last week who's extremely technically savvy, but he did not get this concept until I pointed it out to him. It's not that he didn't understand it; the idea was just so appalling that it never occurred to him.

7. Your practice of citing Gartner for reasons other than comic relief shows just how tenuous is your grasp of the principles of free / libre / open-source software and the motivations of those who use it and defend its definition against those who would muddy it.

Asides:

- On point 2: I've never heard the MTV Unplugged session that NiN did, but I'm sure it was awesome. Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt" was great too.

- If music is as similar to software as you imply, and if the average software user really does not care about code, then please explain the profusion of video games with ersatz musical instruments for controllers.

[pentest]

Lots of ignorance about what software, music and open source is and what Trent has done in his business model, he does more then just give away MP3's.

If I pay for an open source application, I can do anything I want with it, including switch vendor support, support it in house and add anything I want to it.

"If music is as similar to software as you imply, and if the average software user really does not care about code, then please explain the profusion of video games with ersatz musical instruments for controllers."

That makes absolutely no sense. Most people don't care how music is recorded, and don't care that Trent releases it in raw form so others can remix it, neither do people care how software works, in fact they don't have the background to understand either. They just care if their stupid plastic guitar is working.

[cube3]

Remember first to sign a contract with a old style big money record company, and make some videos and movie scores for mtv first.

anyone who never got those deals and money- broadcast fame want to tell us how much they ACTUALLY made giving AWAY free products?

just more meme myths from cnet. OWNED by CBS.

[Kalel559]

Wow, I like how Trent Reznor is getting credit for an idea Derek Webb has already come up with and been implementing for a year or so now. Hasn't anyone heard of NoiseTrade.com or is it still too underground in the music industry?

Sorry, Trent, but Derek has you beat...

[pentest]

Trent has been doing this for almost 16 months, and who knows how long he has been toying with it.

Nice try on the self promotion

[odubtaig]

...and it's been two years since Andrew Dubber published published "20 things You Must Know About Music Online" which says a lot of things I've been trying to tell people for at least five years, only with numbers to back it up.

http://newmusicstrategies.com/ebook/

[levander404]

You guys finding every little whole. It's an analogy. Yes, there are always differences. But, analogies are used as a means of explaining concepts via pointing out similarities to another concept.

But, I left the article thinking, "pfffffft, Reznor's model will never work." He's got a million times the recognition in music than the average musician. Even if he is making more money with this new model than he was with the old model of selling music in the industry, there's no way of knowing that it could be reproduced by people who didn't have the advantage of making it enormously big with the old model.

The case that it could be made to work, that's the article I'd like to read. None of this hand-waving over what someone who's already a celebrity has been trying to achieve.

[odubtaig]

http://newmusicstrategies.com/
http://www.musicthinktank.com/

Read through those a bit, see which small bands are succeeding and which are failing. I've been seeing this with small bands for years, excellent bands failing while mediocre ones succeed because they know how to promote themselves.

[spais1]

There are loads of ways to make easy money online. I found free sites like
http://theinternetcashcow.blogspot.com/
helpful when I set up my blog. If someone asks you to pay for their advices then its probably a scam.