Mon, 03 Mar 2008 15:35:00
Nine Inch Nails sort-of gives away new album *UPDATED*
Another move toward the inevitable…
The 36-track instrumental record, recorded in a ten-week period last year, is available in a variety of download options and as a physical copy.
The options are a free download featuring the collection’s first nine tracks, a $5 download featuring the whole album, a $10 two-CD set (either via the website or in shops from April 5) and a $75 deluxe edition, including a hardcover book and a data DVD and a Blu-ray disc featuring high definition recordings and a slide show.
1. I know only big bands can do this right now. Most especially bands that own studios and can do their own production, plus afford the bandwidth something like this takes. BUT...it has to start somewhere and I applaud Trent for deciding to walk the walk and bond more with his fans and customers and not with the RIAA or the record companies.
2. This is the right way to do it now. He’s offering a sampler for free, the entire thing in high-quality MP3, Apple Lossless or FLAC for five bucks, and various other versions for up to $300 (collector’s edition with DVDs and vinyl and all sorts of extras).
3. I am really glad it’s instrumental. I’m sick of political preaching in Trent’s music. Actually I’m sick of it from everyone’s music, but that’s neither here nor there.
4. Don’t bother trying to buy it today. The servers are absolutely toasted. I was able to place an order and get a download link, but the downloads themselves never finish, and now I am locked out until I get help from their tech support.
*UPDATE*
24 hours later and the nin.com people still haven’t bothered to contact me to tell me how I can download what i paid for. Disappointing. BUT...I want to reward this business model, so I went to Amazon and bought the entire 36 track thing there. Amazon is NOT giving you 320K MP3s. They look to be VBR between 192 and 256. Good quality though, and fully tagged and everything. Regular old MP3s. No DRM.
Oh, the album? IT’S FUCKING AWFUL. It’s 36 tracks of partial song ideas and unfinished elements. It should be called “Garage Sale of Reznor’s ‘Ideas’ Hard Drive.” There are maybe three decent “songs” in the whole mess, and only two of those could even make you think Nine Inch Nails. The rest are unfinished atmospherics, diddling on the piano (obvious leftovers from the ‘La Mer/Big Sur’ sessions) and Garage Band-style beats and loops. As a way to shift the industry, I applaud it. As an album (or albums) full of music, I want to punch Trent’s fucking face in for daring to take people’s money for this unfinished shit.
I kept thinking “Well there are 36 tracks, surely ten or fifteen of them will be some kind of level of listenable” but no...nothing ever came of it. It just drones on and diddles on for 36 god-damned tracks. It’s a video game soundtrack is what it is. Only his work on the Quake 1 soundtrack was like, seven hundred times better.
I still think people should buy the $5 version, but feel free to send the files directly to the trash bin. It’ll save you some time and hard drive space.
Posted by JimK at 03:35 PM on March 03, 2008
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#2 Posted by Sean Galbraith 
on 03/03 at 06:40 PM -
A friend of mine who works for a very major record label told me that on their label one single artist is responsible for the company’s entire ability to sign and finance every single other artist on the label, including a lot of other big name artists. The math is boggling.
#3 Posted by matthean 
on 03/03 at 08:02 PM -
“I know only big bands can do this right now.”
Not really. Indie artist have been giving away albums too. Big name artist just get vast more press for doing it. Noisetrade is/was suppose to be a place to really back this sort of thing, but for whatever reason the artist behind it hasn’t really done much with it after letting people download his entire album for free as long as you added in 5 e-mails of your friends. They merely sent out one e-mail to the people and that was it. The final total was 80K in downloads for an artist that the vast majority of the US would have zero clue who he was. And yes, the album sold well all things considered. It’s why Noisetrade was started because it seemed like a very viable thing to do based on the one album experiment.
#4 Posted by supercore on 03/03 at 09:42 PM -
As a struggling musician myself, I can definently say that there’s no choice between selling and giving away your music. It just makes more sense, since there’s no manufacturing costs or distribution costs other than studio time, to give away the music and make it up on tshirts, ticket sales, etc. My last band put out a 4 song EP on vinyl with a free cd-r that we could burn for $.25 People loved having the vinyl for home listening and could easily rip the cd to their ipod without having to download low quality files. People loved it and we sold out of the whole order of 300 in a little over a week and a half. Trent’s got the idea but we little guys have been doing what he’s doing for years now.
Also Jim, No most Lost? This season’s been way better than the last.
#5 Posted by JimK on 03/04 at 03:27 PM -
which did you get?
I’m trying for the FLAC $5 bunch. But...see my update.
As soon as I saw the limited edition vinyl in the super mega pack I knew you’d be eyeballing it, BTW. Limited edition, numbered vinyl? It’s like he made a version JUST for you! :)
#6 Posted by jo-jo on 03/04 at 03:50 PM -
As soon as I saw the limited edition vinyl in the super mega pack I knew you’d be eyeballing it, BTW. Limited edition, numbered vinyl? It’s like he made a version JUST for you! :)
i told john i had been practicing for that day for 13 years ;)
had the store been working, i would have bought it within minutes of it hitting the web. drij found it so randomly and coincidently, that it was bizarre (see my lj post)
i’ve only heard a coupla snippits and liked what i heard. i’m FINALLY able to download the FLAC, but then drij is going to convert it for me to mp3 since i have no idea what to do with a FLAC ;) i’d offer you the files, but it sounds like you’re gonna pass on that ;)
#7 Posted by jo-jo on 03/05 at 03:59 PM -
i feel like we totally listened to different albums. i quite enjoyed it as music to have in the background while doing work. i will listen to it often, i predict. and i’m certainly not disappointed in my purchase of the UBERDELUXE. (though had i hated it, i would have just sold it on ebay since it’s already sold out, which means the value automatically went up ;)
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which did you get?