How It Is Done
It all started with some minimalist blogs from the front man. The first, titled “?”, said only: “We have been very busy doing secret things. We’ll start to tell you about them soon.” Then “2 weeks“… “soon“… “tick tock, tick tock“… “2 hours.” Fans agonized and theorized… what was coming? Another ARG experience? Another collaboration? Another announcement?
What came was Ghosts volumes I through IV… a double-disc collection of Nine Inch Nails instrumental tracks of a variety of textures and tones. No advertising. No MTV hype. No record label. Direct to the public. And released under a Creative Commons license.
Whoa.
You can get 9 of the tracks for free, and then there are various tiers of commercial product you can purchase, each upping the merchandising factor from its predecessor. All the purchases include an immediate download of a high quality digital version of all of the songs.
It took me two hours to complete my purchase last night; their servers were getting annihilated by the traffic, which far exceeded even Trent’s high expectations.
When Radiohead did their In Rainbows release, T.R. had commented that it was a great concept, but could be executed so much better. Now we know what he had in mind.
It’s utterly brilliant. And the music is a delight, the more ethereal bits reminiscent of the Quake soundtrack from so many years ago, but with more sonic depth. Definite headphones / eyes closed material.
Congratulations, Nine Inch Nails. I hope this venture is as big a success as it is appearing to be.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment... or, take it to the forum (click here)
This is the future of music distribution. I got my tracks today after about a 20 minute wait they were in my email inbox. I love it. And the music is wonderful as you say. I’ll probably buy the whole album. Glad you commented on this, Phil.
Comment by ricky grove — March 3, 2008 @ 9:30 pm
Jesus Christ…
I was expecting him to announce Year Zero 2 or something from the teaser videos they had been posting on YouTube. I had been following nin.com pretty closely and the “tick tock… tick tock…” post nearly drove me crazy. I had personally expected it to be at least another year (or two) before seeing another major NIN studio release. I hope the artistic and creative freedom Trent has been graced with - the lack of chains from a label - enable and endow him with the insight to produce much new music.
I just discovered all of this about 20 minutes ago and am still blown away. I love NIN.com’s new design. From what little artwork I have seen so far, Rob’s photos remind me very much of “Koyaanisqatsi” (that’s a good thing in my opinion :-)) I’ve only listened to four songs so far via the flash player on the site (my favorite so far is “Ghosts 24″ - it’s insane) but I love what I’ve heard so far. Very cool news about the creative commons route he has decided to take as well. I have no doubt that you have work in the queue already Phil, but I think it would be nothing short of a treat to see another NIN interpretation.
Damn. Just… damn.:-D
Comment by kradproductions — March 4, 2008 @ 1:36 am
I just had to throw this out there quickly:
Listening to “Ghosts 15″ now and it sounds like something that should be in a David Lynch movie. It would be badass to see those two collaborate again. There, I’ll go away.
Comment by kradproductions — March 4, 2008 @ 1:42 am