In an unusual nod to the popularity of free music online, the rock act Nine Inch Nails is offering its new album, “The Slip,” through its Web site — for nothing.
In a post on the band’s Web site, the band’s leader, Trent Reznor, said, “Thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years — this one’s on me.”
The album…appears to represent the first time a superstar act has distributed an entire album without any opportunity for people to pay for it. Its release comes two months after the band issued the instrumental album “Ghosts I-IV” and allowed fans to obtain a portion of it for free or the entire recording for $5.
Mr. Reznor’s new offer could serve as another test of how the easy availability of free music online affects subsequent CD sales and other money-making opportunities. “The Slip” will not be sold on CD or vinyl until at least July, according to representatives for the band. But the free digital version could stoke interest for Nine Inch Nails’ recently announced concert tour. Already, radio stations have shown interest in “Discipline,” a song from “The Slip” that was released about two weeks ago.
Free ain’t bad. If you like the music.
Wave goodbye to the RIAA
This will be interesting to see how it all comes out. I know bands that still think that CD sales or a recording contract will make them money. They don’t understand that giving away or selling their music cheap will open up revenue in other areas like more fans at shows or selling swag online.
…ah, Trent. Slowly but surely killing off the tired old “you can’t compete against ‘free'” myth. It’s almost beautiful to watch 😀
Radiohead did this last year and decided against repeating the giveaway.
#3 I believe that radiohead had attempted to get people to pay based on how much they liked the album. NiN appears to be giving this away for free. Free as in you can not pay for it even if you wanted to.
I liked him better when he was on drugs.
Rehab seems to cause bands to get lame.
I must say, It is nice to see stars giving back.
I liked him better when he was on drugs.
Rehab seems to cause bands to get lame.
I must say, It is nice to see stars giving back.
Sorry for the double post.
It’s my lame ISP in action.
I’m jamming to the album now! Thanks for the link.
I wonder what happens when Nine Inch Nails meet the Butt Hole Surfers ???
No thanks. They want your email. That’s not 100% free. When they simply provide a link to the download I will bother. When they make it so that I can listen to it without going through their hoops, simply tuning in, like with my radio in the car, then I will bother. If I like the music I will buy a CD from the store so I can play it in my car or various parts of the house. I have been waiting ten years for this nonsense to stop. MP3’s are a horrible investment. There are too many problems. I don’t get why people even bother. They sound like crap. You don’t have anything tangible. CD’s rock and always will until something better comes along that is tangible like a CD. They are standardized, play in every CD player.
#10
1. Sign up for Hotmail email address.
2. Give NIN your hotmail address.
3. Receive confirmation on Hotmail address.
4. Never use hotmail address again. (I keep mine active just for things like this.)
5. Download files. You have choice of several formats, including 1.2GB of WAV.
6. Burn to CD
7. Goto step 6 as needed for friends, family or archive.
Too bad the site seems to be down at the moment…
It’s free, but i hope it’s better than everything that he’s done since “Fragile”…
#10
http://www.temporaryinbox.com/
An alternative to the Hotmail idea from #9. Then follow his 2-7. Replace Hotmail with TI where applicable. =D
I meant to say “an idea from #11”. Too early for me.
Would anyone have bought this album anyway? What is the groups popularity today?
If the band is a “has been” (I really don’t know) then this may be a way to stay alive a little longer and hope for sold out concert tours.
#17: Popular enough to make $750k in 24h from the limited-edition release alone of the their last album, and popular enough to make another $900k in the following week from the sale of $5 download versions, $10 double CDs and $75 CD+DVD packages.
All in all, nearly 800,000 transactions (including downloads of the first free half the album) in the first week after release.
No idea how this compares to the standard, mass-produced crap we’re flooded with.
I believe that this album is overpriced. I’ll admit to being old but what kind and how much drugs does it take to make this a good listen?
Do the fans of this group have a higher than normal suicide rate?
#17-It’s not about how popular they are. They already have a built in fan base who gladly spread the word to their friends and their friends… Modern acts, if they are smart, should aspire to get a hardcore fan base and let them help spread the word. Any real musical artist worth his/her weight would rather have a small die hard fan base, than a “blow up hit” with millions of fickle fans who abandon them as soon as their next song/album doesn’t sound like the last thing they liked.
Modern radio and video outlets have all but abdicated the job of breaking new cool music and not just the crap they are told to promote.
For all options but the .mp3, they’re using torrents to distribute the album. I love how powerful and useful a good torrent is.
#11 – No thanks. They want your email. That’s not 100% free.
Whatever… And I thought I was paranoid about information.
There aren’t adding it to any lists, but if you don’t trust that then just keep a yahoo address to use for that sort of thing.
When they simply provide a link to the download I will bother. When they make it so that I can listen to it without going through their hoops, simply tuning in, like with my radio in the car, then I will bother.
For just about everyone who runs a web presence, bandwidth is not free. Emailing you a link, with an access code, is a more cost effective way to distribute the music and control bandwidth.
Its free. How much do you think it should cost NiN to offer a free album?
If I like the music I will buy a CD from the store so I can play it in my car or various parts of the house.
You mean exactly like you can with MP3s?
I have been waiting ten years for this nonsense to stop. MP3’s are a horrible investment.
How long have you waited for buggy whips to come back?
MP3s are free, by the way.
There are too many problems. I don’t get why people even bother. They sound like crap.
No… They sound like compressed audio with limited dynamic range. In a car, or on a home stereo with those base-free little satellite speakers, on a computer, on an iPod, they sound perfectly fine.
Recorded at low to moderate bit-rates they show their flaws when played on audio gear that cost more than a car. If you are that guy, you can buy the CDs anyway and it shouldn’t matter to you.
You don’t have anything tangible.
No… YOU don’t have anything tangible if you don’t know how to practice proper back-up techniques. I, on the other hand, have everything labeled, filed and organized. recorded at high bit rates, and backed up redundantly. It would take a meteor or a flood to rob me of my music collection, and in the case of a meteor or flood, I’d have bigger things to worry about.
CD’s rock and always will until something better comes along that is tangible like a CD. They are standardized, play in every CD player.
I don’t disagree totally. LPs were far better than CDs. I miss have substantial album art, liner notes, and all that jazz. And for the snob… err, I mean audiophile, LPs are still available, and are in fact of higher quality than they ever used to be.
CDs definitely give you something to catalog and store and move in heavy boxes too…
But at some point you just have to come face to face with a certain reality… Most people DON’T really like music. If they did, they wouldn’t watch American Idol and they would think iPods were “da bomb” and they’d actually haunt record stores and get excited when they ran across that rare import edition of whatever it was that turned their cranks.
MOST people like music that has been focus grouped for max compatibility with their ready made lifestyle and issued in a digestible format, such as on the soundtrack of whatever TV show they escape reality with.
So really… If music is by and large and disposable commodity designed as background noise for a consumer culture, what do you care how it sounds or is distributed?
.
#19 – Do the fans of this group have a higher than normal suicide rate?
No…
Also, we are 70% less likely to suck the life out of a party.
This album is released free as a thank you to the fans for their support. As you may or may not know he released “Ghosts” for $5 and so this is what I’d expect to pay for future releases (very reasonable compared to the $20 you’d have to pay in store, plus I’m in the UK so $5 is less than a Starbucks coffee!).
Reznor has just announce a new tour and lets not forget that this is where artists earn most of their money, if he was still on a record label he’d have only gotten a small percentage of the sales.
As for CD’s, when I compare plugging in my ipod through my amp or using the disc player the difference in quality is so minor it’s not worth worrying about.
This is the way to go, don’t see how people could moan about it. 🙂
#21 – For all options but the .mp3, they’re using torrents to distribute the album. I love how powerful and useful a good torrent is.
I hate bit-torrents. They may be useful for new Linux distros, new game patches, new pirated movies, new, new, new…
Torrents are useless for whatever doesn’t have the immediate attention of the crowd. I hate knowing that I can’t get what matters to me unless it matters to everyone else too.
#23 – As for CD’s, when I compare plugging in my ipod through my amp or using the disc player the difference in quality is so minor it’s not worth worrying about.
It’s hard to tell on low end gear. It’s one reason I like low end gear. I only have a few grand in my speakers. So they sound great… unless you are an “audiophile” and I couldn’t care less about what audiophiles think.
I recently auditioned a bunch of CDs on two speakers, a CD player and an amp that cost more than most people’s educations. It’s just one of the hazards of my job. I’m grateful I don’t own gear like that or my CD collection would be useless.
#24–OFTLO==I thought the whole purpose of high end gear was to make crap sound good? As you say, why spend big bucks if they “can’t play your CD collection?” Quality is not revealing every scratch, wow, and flutter–it is to filter them out, patch them up===make them sound good!
I used to play with all the buttons on my tuner but things got filtered and ultimately the music sounded a bit flat. Now I play everything as raw as possible and take the tinny sounds to keep as much of the music there as possible. Bad gear huh?
OhForTheLoveOf said Also, we are 70% less likely to suck the life out of a party.
You don’t have to, “Hurt” is a party vacuum all by itself.
The album sucks, they couldn’t sell it.
#25 – I thought the whole purpose of high end gear was to make crap sound good?
You thought wrong.
Nothing makes crap sound good. You can make crap sound not bad by hiding its flaws, but doing that also degrades the quality of non-crap… Essentially making the exceptional sound mediocre.
But I have no vested interest in this stuff. Beyond me being satisfied in the sound I get from DVDs and CDs, I really don’t care about it at all.