The personal approach

Radiohead introduced a whole new way of retailing music with their album In Rainbows.

In addition to the pay what you want online release they also offered a very pricey special edition boxed set.

Now Nine Inch Nails have taken the Radiohead model a step further.

They offered a $300 deluxe version of their new album. It sold out in 2 days! Grossing them somewhere in the region of $750,000.

The album was released under a Creative Commons license, yet it managed to gross sales of $1.6 million.

Goes to show that if you have something worth buying people will pay for it.

So maybe the future is not, as many experts will tell you, all about free.

Maybe, just maybe, it's about offering something a little more personal.