Trent Reznor: (Purportedly) Getting That Paper

So the Nine Inch Nails frontman has released the first-week sales figures for Ghosts I-IV, the multiple-format instrumental album he self-released just two Sundays ago via his Web site. Given that the $300 super-mega-deluxe edition sold out its 2,500 copy pressing by the following Tuesday, even with a server snafu or twelve, it was clear that Trent was going to do pretty nicely for himself with this tweak to the newish model. But just how well did he do? Let’s go to the un-vetted press release!

Nine Inch Nails’ 36-track instrumental opus Ghosts I-IV, released March 2 via NIN.com, has amassed a first week total of 781,917 transactions (including free and paid downloads as well as orders for physical product), resulting in a take of $1,619,420 USD.

‘Course Trent, like Radiohead, benefitted mightily in this sorta-pathbeating endeavor from his pre-existing celebrity and his rabid ‘net-nerd fanbase. (Hard to imagine acts who never topped the Billboard album chart in the pre-BitTorrent era–like poor bridesmaid/experiment Saul Williams, for instance–moving over 2.5k of a $300 four-LP set in 48 hours or less.) And while you may dislike his music, find his Digg-ite cult irritating, and not share his intense distaste for traditional record labels and their slow-grinding machinery, if these numbers pan out (or keep going up), we all must now agree on one thing: TR knows how to stay Web 2.0 paid.

NIN New Album Pulls $1.6M In Its First Week [Billboard]