Following Radiohead’s example last year, who released their latest album online, Nine Inch Nails put out their new record up for download yesterday. The first nine tracks of the instrumental album called "Ghosts" is available for free download in DRM-free mp3 format. The whole album can be bought as a digital release for the bargain price of 5$. Also different hard-copy releases will bei available for fans relying on physical media.

Trent Reznor describes the album as a "soundtrack for daydreams", each track has his own album art supporting the mood created by the track. Reznor also states, that he has been planing an album like this since years, but it took him up to now, to be able to do it. Probably the new distribution strategy is part of his plans. Tracks of the album are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Comercial-Share Alike License. So fans are encouraged to create there own remixes of the tracks. The initial work of NIN is just a starting point to elaborate on those given impressions.

This has been possible due to the breaking free of NIN's contract with their recording company. Now NIN holds the rights to their new works exclusively, and therefor can use them as they like. In the past there already has been a quarrel about a planned remix page by NIN. The innovative project was stopped due to the danger of lawsuits. I think this is a good example for "copyright-kills-music".

In my opinion Radiohead and NIN are examples for the new upcoming modell of music distribution. To a certain grade recording companies have been rendered useless. Well known artists can set up their own distribution, where unknown artists gain there popularity through social distribution using myspace and other networks.

The official homepage for thise album seems to be down due to overwhelming response of the fans. The free version of the album can be download via Bittorent here. NIN even posted a statement additional to this official torrent:

Now that we're no longer constrained by a record label, 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, and we believe in finding ways to utilize new technologies instead of fighting them.

This entry was posted by Jürgen Hösch on Tuesday, March 4. 2008 at 15:03. and is filed under Media. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own blog.