Nine Inch Nails releases Internet album

Trent Reznor

(Credit: Rob Sheridan)

Trent Reznor, the man behind the rock group Nine Inch Nails, continued his foray into self-distribution by releasing a 36-track instrumental album over the Internet.

The album, Ghosts I-IV, went on sale Sunday on NIN.com, the band's Web site, and was available in a varying range of price packages.

Reznor is giving away the first nine songs of the album for free. The entire album in a digital version is available for $5. Nine Inch Nails' fans can order separate disc-sets of the album (with varying bonus materials and merchandise) from $10 to $300.

With the album release, Nine Inch Nails is the latest to offer its own version of the online promotion made famous by British supergroup Radiohead. In October, Radiohead released In Rainbows over the Internet and stirred excitement throughout the music industry by allowing fans to pay whatever price they chose for the music.

Reznor, who split with his record label last year, applauded Radiohead's move. In October, shortly after In Rainbows came out, he helped little-known music artist Saul Williams release an online-only album in a similar way.

In keeping with Reznor's views that performers should embrace BitTorrent and other file-sharing technologies, Nine Inch Nails has uploaded some of its new songs on BitTorrent sites.

"Now that we're no longer constrained by a record label," the band said in a statement, "we've decided to personally upload Ghosts I, the first of the four volumes, to various torrent sites because we believe BitTorrent is a revolutionary digital distribution method."

[dascha1]

Roy Clark Launches 'Loopy' On-Demand Music

Visit an American Country Music Hero's web site to listen and learn
automatically:

http://www.royclark.org

And soon you'll bring back good, wholesome old-fashioned values.

[cjs351]

New Nine Inch Nails album delivered through TuneCore

I'm the marketing intern at TuneCore, we're the digital distribution company that delivered the new Nine Inch Nails album to Amazon.com. Our service makes it possible for everyone to deliver their music to iTunes, Amazon MP3, Rhapsody, eMusic, Napster and more while getting to keep 100% of their rights and royalties. We are very proud to have a role in Trent's groundbreaking new vision! Feel free to email me if you have any questions.

-Jake

[geek.]

Good Luck geting a (legit) copy.

I paid the $10 for the CD/Download version, and it subsequently failed. I also tried three times last night and once today to get the free copy.

Customer service is a joke too, as I haven't received a confirmation of receipt that I sent an email to them (for the paid download).

So no my choices are to either wait until the issue is resolved by the powers that be or to go DL it off a Torrent.

*** Trent!

[hunter_jc]

Can't download and customer service stinks.

If they are not going to answer any email then don't tell its customers to email the support email. I can't download any stinking music or maybe the new music is call silence. I am downloading something with that title from pirate bay. hope it an't virus

[travisfells]

amazon download is pretty easy

Found out about the release at work today. Tried to download from nin.com at about 8 pm on 3/3/08. The site was pretty much fully crashed.

No big deal, went over to amazon, drop 5 bucks and the tracks were on my pc in no time. listening to them now.

Still going to buy one of the other versions.

Glad my money is finally going to the artist not the record company.

[acamp123]

This is a really great new model. I think its good that there is a resurgence in the importance of live music today. NIN will be playing at Voodoo in New Orleans this year and if you look at NIN's past voodoo performances this will be their show of the year! Check out some videos of NIN at past years of voodoo at http://www.thetenthritual.com/?content=video