Last year, Trent Reznor recorded 36 instrumental tracks. This year, he’s releasing them on the internet, rather à la Radiohead, but without the open price. The collection, entitled Ghosts I-IV is now available in a variety of packages, from a most generous gratis to a nail-bitingly expensive 300 US bucks. Find out what kinda nail job you get for your money below.
Journos and music fans from all corners fawned over Radiohead for their bold release strategy for In Rainbows. After breaking with the majors, Trent Reznor and his parter-in-crime Saul Williams are taking that strategy and stepping it up to the next level of awesome. Saul’s new Trent-produced album The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust is now available two ways: Free or $5. For zilch, you get the whole album in DRM-free 192kbps MP3 encoded with LAME 3.97 “and love,” plus the digital booklet (take that, Radiohead). For $5, you get the digital booklet and a choice between 320kbps MP3 or FLAC lossless, meaning even audiophiles can feel good about purchasing a digital copy.
While he kind of dodged the question in the famed interview he revealed he was a former OiNK member, this feels like a pointer toward where the release of the next NIN album is heading. I’d still prefer a physical CD, personally, but this kind of digital release I can get behind—the price and the format are right. The rest of the industry would do well to pay close attention to how this turns out—or not, and simply follow suit. [Niggy Tardust]
Hear that? It’s the RIAA quaking in their diamond-coated boots as yet another A-list band gives labels the finger: Pretty hate machine Trent Reznor announced today that “as of right now Nine Inch Nails is a totally free agent, free of any recording contract with any label.” Instead of futzing through the hapless middleman of an inept label, Trent’s promising “a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate,” so we can expect more experiments in direct distribution and promotion, probably culminating in an album release not unlike Radiohead’s In Rainbows.
If two of the biggest acts in the industry can see the digital writing on the wall and totally embrace it—that the old way of doing business is broken—why can’t the labels? What Radiohead and NIN are showing is that the business model “of the future” feared by entrenched interests isn’t arriving some time in the horizon. It’s touching down now. [NIN, Flickr]
