New York Times pop music critic John Pareles wrote a lengthy piece on Trent Reznor in last Sunday's paper, Frustration and Fury: Take It. It’s Free, in which he describes how Reznor, recording as Nine Inch Nails, is at the leading edge of several trends in the music business, such as eschewing a deal with a major record label in favor of distributing the music himself from his own web site. In fact, the download of his most recent album, The Slip, precedes its release on CD and is available for free, a tactic that may very well be repaid in ticket sales for the upcoming tour.
The download is available in a variety of formats:
- mp3 at 256 kbits/sec
- FLAC (open source lossless)
- FLAC 24/96
- Apple lossless
- WAV 24/96
The high bandwidth files are labeled "recommended only for advanced users
and are distributed by BitTorrent. And, of course, no DRM.
Reznor also gives away the raw tracks from his albums for fans to remix, saying “I’m done with them. Why not?”
Recent Comments