New Evidence of Paradigm Shifts in Music Distribution, XXXV…

I came across the Last.fm Playground today and noticed something interesting, all 10 of the most frequent Top 10 tracks from Last.fm (the top 10 most listened to tracks for a user) are from NIN’s free album “The Slip”.

Last.fm Playground - Most Frequent Top 10 Tracks

I am understanding that a large part of this is due to 1. Trent and NIN’s huge popularity and, 2. the album was given away for free, but, I think a large percentage of this is also from a shift of people getting their music online and in digital format to start with, rather than buying an album and then doing the MP3 magic on the spinning hard disks. I don’t have the screenshot evidence, but I’m sure that when Radiohead released “In Rainbows”, there was a similar thing to be seen.

Being a complete design geek, I’ll continue to buy albums from my favorite artists because of great design, but for the mid-level artists that I like for now, I’ll just buy the digital copies and save myself the storage hassle.

Written on May 13, 2008 at roughly 11:03 am. And by roughly I mean at that exact time.

1 Comment

Grant May 17, 2008 at roughly 9:16 am

Being a complete design geek, I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ll continue to buy albums from my favorite artists because of great design, but for the mid-level artists that I like for now, I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ll just buy the digital copies and save myself the storage hassle.”

I do the same thing. Artists now fall into two tiers for me - the ones where I have to buy the physical copy, and the ones where I want the digital version.

What will be interesting to watch is the transition to all-digital. I’m working with some bands now that are releasing albums (or EP’s at least) that will never take physical form. So we try to do things like include PDF’s of the liner notes to help recreate the physical artwork experience.

Go ahead and comment. I won't make fun of you too much.