An album that “arrived unexpectedly as the result of an experiment” ended up being the best selling MP3 album at Amazon in 2008. Ghosts I-V, the 36-track instrumental collection from Nine Inch Nails, was released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. From Monday 3 March on the band’s website, fans can download the first nine MP3s of the collection for free – along with a 40-page PDF booklet.

Prior to the album’s release, Trent Reznor wrote on his blog: “The end result is a wildly varied body of music that we’re able to present to the world in ways the confines of a major record label would never have allowed – from a 100% DRM-free, high-quality download, to the most luxurious physical package we’ve ever created.”

It seems the band’s experiment paid off handsomely. In the first week that Ghosts I-V was available, it generated $1.6 million in sales revenue. The album inevitably made its way onto torrent sites for free download, but the tiered purchase scheme obviously enticed enough diehard fans to shell out for the $US300 Ultra-Deluxe Limited Edition.