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Trent-Reznor posts

Filed under: Audio, Internet

NIN gives away another album, either Reznor gets it, or he's just rich

NIN The SlipAfter successfully releasing the last Nine Inch Nails album in 100% digital format with a variety of pricing levels ranging from free to $300, Trent Reznor has decided to go all out and give away the band's new album, "The Slip" for free. You can download all ten tracks in a variety of DRM-free formats, including MP3, FLAC, M4A lossless, and even 24/96 WAV.

This latest move proves one of two things:

  1. It's possible to give away your music for free and make money by touring, and asking fans to pay for premium content.
  2. Trent Reznor has made so much money from music that he can affort to give away his songs for free.

While we'd really like to think that numbe one is true, there's no doubt that the second option is absolutely true. In other words, this is hardly a business model that's going to work for most struggling musicians. But it's encouraging to see the direction that some popular artists are taking when they're freed from the shackles of the major record labels.

Filed under: Audio, Internet

Nine Inch Nails does the Radiohead thing: Free(ish) music downloads

nin ghosts
Trent Reznor has followed through on his promise to release the latest Nine Inch Nails album without a record label. Fans can buy the complete album online in a variety of ways or they can download 1/3rd 1/4th of the songs on the album for free. Considering the complete album packs 36 songs, that means you can pretty much get a full album's worth of music for free.

Plenty of musicians have been releasing digital music downloads for free or for a small fee for years. But over the past year we've seen several high profile acts including Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails try to establish a more direct relationship with their fans. With no middleman, the bands may very well be making more money even though they're charging less for their music.

We'd be surprised if many people to spend $75 o $300 on the deluxe or ultra-deluxe editions (which come with a DVD, Blu-Ray disc, and other goodies like an autograph). But $5 will get you all the songs in DRM-free MP3 format.

Right now the official web site excruciatingly slow. We've had our downloads time out on us a number of times. But as with any new release album, you can already find pretty much every track for free using your favorite BitTorrent tracker. We hope Nine Inch Nails deals with its server issues soon, because it kind of defeats the purpose of this experiment if people just go ahead and download the music illegally without paying anyway.

[via Techmeme]

Filed under: Audio, Business, Internet

Prince sues to protect copyright, Trent Reznor encourages illegal downloads

PrinceMusician Prince (at least that's what we think we're supposed to call him these days) plans to sue internet sites including eBay, YouTube, and The Pirate Bay for illegally distributing his music. Because that's why people aren't buying his CDs anymore. It has nothing to do with the fact that he's a bit over the hill as musicians go or that his eccentric ways might be a bit offputing. Nope. It's piracy.

Prince argues that the sites aren't doing everything they can to prevent piracy. After all, his representatives point out, if YouTube can effectively keep pornography off its site, how hard can it be to remove user-uploaded Prince videos? He may have a point there.

Meanwhile, another musician, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame has a different message for his fans. Speaking in China, Reznor suggested that he'd rather have fans in that country download songs illegally than pay for pirated CDs. Of course the best option is to buy a legal copy of the CD, he says, but Reznor admits that's not always easy for music fans in China.

We wonder which musician the record industry is more likely to support.

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