NIN does it again. Are you watching, Thom?

May 5th, 2008 | Published in Tech | 1 Comment

This is a guest post by Shane Perris, who authors a blog at techwhimsy.com.

Trent Reznor kept hard core Nine Inch Nails fans in desperate suspense for two weeks with cryptic clues in the properties of two free mp3 downloads - Discipline (made available from nin.com) and Echoplex (available exclusively through iLike on Facebook). We were all asked to watch out on 5 May for a big surprise.

5 May arrived and Reznor delivered - and then some - with the release of The Slip, a 44 minute collection of brand new NIN tracks. The kicker is that not only are the tracks released under Creative Commons (by attribution, non-commercial, share-alike, the same as the previous release Ghosts I-IV), they are also free. That’s right - free. Distributed exclusively through nin.com, the album is available in a variety of formats - 320kbps mp3s, FLAC, Apple Lossless and 24/96 WAV audio (for the extreme audiophiles).

There are a few extra nice touches along the way. Reznor is running his own BitTorrent tracker to facilitate the delivery of the FLAC, Apple Lossless and WAV files (which come in at around 270MB for the lossless compression and 1.2GB for the WAV). He has dangled a carrot for those fans still wedded to physical media with promises of a hard copy release sometime in July. The album is also available to stream via the iLike app on Facebook and on the download page fans are encouraged to provide the email addresses of three friends who will also get the download link. The sauce in the pudding is that multitracks for every song on ‘The Slip’ are available for download at remix.nin.com for your remixing pleasure. All measures seem designed to help this release go viral in a big way.

Contrast this approach to Thom Yorke and Radiohead. When asked about the In Rainbows pay-what-you-like experiment, Yorke was recently quoted as saying "I think it was a one-off response to a particular situation … I don’t think it would have the same significance now, if we choose to give something away again. It was a moment in time". Yorke’s statement follows on from previous ones made by the band and its management that distribution of ‘In Rainbows’ was a spur of the moment one that simply helped deliver publicity for the physical release, rather than break down the barriers of a decaying major label business model.

But what’s in it for Reznor? ‘The Slip’ clearly won’t provide the rumoured $1.6m gross earnings that ‘Ghosts’ did. Reznor has long had a strong relationship with his fans, and ‘The Slip’ clearly is a gift to the faithful. However, a quick check of the NIN tour page reveals what is likely a secondary, but still important motivation. Nine Inch Nails have a number of shows coming up in July and all this attention certainly isn’t going to hurt ticket sales now, is it.