The thing alot of people are missing is that he isn't technically giving away the songs for free, he's asking for an email address. Sure there will be people who dl the torrets from somewhere else but that happens with all music.
The way business is going online is that you need to collect leads e.g. people who might be interested in your product. Once you have someone's email address in a legal fashion, instead of having that one chance to get them to buy your cd right then and there, you have an extremely low cost way to market to interested people. They were interested enough to give you their email address then they will be interested enough to listen to what you have to say after they have listened to the music.
If the normal turn over is 100 - 1, eg, out of every 100 people who hear your music one person buys the cd then it doesn't seem much. But consider that as the first time they hear it. If they are getting emails from you or any other form of correspondence they will remember you and your music every time they hear from you.
With good marketing in your emails and maybe a couple more freebies you could bring the conversion rate even higher say 100 - 5. Considering that if you turn someone in to a fan then they won't just buy the one cd they will most likely be interested in your back catalogue and future releases.
With someone as big as nin, they are going to be giving away more free music gathering more email addresses and therefore direct access to their fans and possible customers. In the long run they are building a database of peopel who are interested and more than likely, moving anyone who buys something on to a different list of email addys of "proven buyers" who they can market more aggressively towards.
The other big bonus to this is in the long run, every new release, tour, merchandise item etc etc can be distributed to thousands of potential buyers at the touch of a button.
I don't think Trent is devaluing his music at all by giving it away. I think everyone should be using this form of list building in everything they do.
I do this form of business in my day to day life from home and i'm not selling a physical product. I'm selling digital eBooks, the perfect business model as the item is instantly delivered to the buyer without me having to do anything except check my emails a couple of times a day
Get wise people, learn from what people are doing and why "free" isn't as free as it seems and can be extremely lucrative
