I knew the album was free and still purchased it, although not from Amazon, from the site NIN set up. I definitely still purchase albums of bands I like, why wouldn't you?
I would likely purchase some other product from a band that I like- say, a T-Shirt (which in turn advertises that band) vs. buying a music download that I could get for free. But the idea is the same- I am still supporting the musicians with my wallet.
The albums downloads included more than just music in this case. The Ghosts download included FLACs (as well as multiple encoding of mp3s) of all the songs and high quality art that was created for the release (I think it was $10 for everything, and more money for a limited-release vinyl). So had you known about the download, there would have been even more of an incentive to get it from nin.com
I definitely agree about supporting the band through merchandise and concerts. I ended up seeing NIN four times in 2008, dragging my parents to one of their shows. I can't say I did this because of purely wanting to support the band, but due to the Lights In The Sky tour being so jaw-droppingly amazing.
band t-shirts (zero)
"free albums" (zero)
albums of any type (zero)
Can we please spend less time talking about the music industry it's a small industry which most people don't buy anything from. Why do people find it so interesting?
It's extremely profitable, but that does not mean it's large. IBM made $10.4 billion USD it's got 386,558 people which is a large company, but the recording industry is significantly smaller than that.
PS: Your iPod is not part of the recording industry, the local band that's waiting for their break is not part of the recording industry even though they would like to be. The recording industry is focused on promoting and selling music and while they make a lot of money they don't really use vary many people.
