Looks like Nine Inch Nails is the new Radiohead. The latest album from Trent Reznor, Ghosts I-IV, has been released as a free download via the band's website, NIN.com. Since becoming available this weekend, fans (other than your goth-y high school best friend) have rushed to the site; a post made late Sunday says that a glut of downloads has made the website more sluggish than a depressed teenager.
The disc consists of 36 instrumental tracks and features collabs with the Dresden Dolls' Brian Viglione and legendary guitarist Adrian Belew (Bowie, Zappa). On his site, Reznor describes the all-instrumental album as "a soundtrack for daydreams."
"I've been considering and wanting to make this kind of record for years, but by its very nature it wouldn't have made sense until this point. This collection of music is the result of working from a very visual perspective — dressing imagined locations and scenarios with sound and texture."
A la Radiohead – who initially released their latest effort, In Rainbows, via the web last fall – Reznor has by-passed the record labels to post his new record on the Internet, offering fans a multitude of ways to get the album's 36 instrumental tracks onto their iPods and into their dark and twisty souls.
For fans who prefer to spend their money on liquid eyeliner than new music, nine of the tracks are available for free. For five bucks, the entire album can be yours, along with a 40-page booklet of art and other nifty album-related stuff. For those hardcore NIN fans out there – whose dedication to Reznor has somehow survived the detritus following Downward Spiral – there are numerous other "collector" packages available via the band's website, topping off with a $300 package – autographed by the prince of synth-y darkness himself -- that includes a book of images inspired by the music, 2 CDs and a DVD.
Reznor split from his long-time record label, Interscope, last fall. This is the first time the rock star has put one of his own records up online for the taking, but late last year, as the producer of rapper Saul Williams' The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust, Reznor released that record online under a similarly Radiohead-inspired web-only sales model. In January, NME reported that Reznor was somewhat unsatisfied with that experiment. Said Reznor, as of Jan. 2, "154,449 people chose to download Saul's new record. 28,322 of those people chose to pay $5 for it, meaning: 18.3 per cent chose to pay. … Is it good news that less than one in five feel it was worth $5? I'm not sure what I was expecting but that percentage -- primarily from fans -- seems disheartening."
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