I’ll admit it, I’m not a music buff. I don’t generally attend concerts, I don’t buy a lot of music (In either the digital or physical senses) and generally my radios (Again, digital and physical) are off. I listen to podcasts when I’m near my computer or traveling solo, and I let whoever I’m with control the background when I’m not alone.
But the other day I bought some music. Specifically, I bought 2 CDs worth of it. Now, being that I don’t listen to music often, this might seem a little silly. Especially when, and my memory is bad – so I may be wrong here, I have yet to really enjoy much of anything this group has put out before.
Lost? I bought the new Nine Inch Nails albums Ghosts I-IV.
Why? To support the idea. NIN has released two distinct versions of the digital download. The first is a free download from the website containing only the first part of the collection, Ghosts I. You can go, right now, and download that from their site for free. They also released a torrent file of it to help things along. The second costs 5.00, but is all four volumes, and contains a 40-page ebook and a bunch of extras, like wallpapers and avatars. Your options when you pay for the download are MP3 (320k, LAME encoded, already properly ID3′d, for the techies) and both Apple and FLAC lossless formats (In iTunes and not).
But NIN has gone beyond that. For 10.00 you get physical copies of the CDs. For 75 you get the 2 CDs, a Blu-Ray of the albums (With slideshow) and a DVD of the multi-track parts that make up the songs. Perfect for re-mixing. There was a 300 dollar package too, containing autographed vinyls. All 2500 of them have been sold, though. You still get the downloads, too, when you buy a physical copy.
The greatest part of this release, and the reason I jumped up and down when I saw this, was the FAQ page. More specifically, the line that read Ghosts I-IV is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license. Podcasters? Go nuts – you can play ALL of the new track. Or mix them. Or add to them. And if you pick up that remix package? You can then mix up all sorts of goodies.
I haven’t listened to the music yet, so I can’t tell you if it’s good… But I can tell you it was worth my 5.00 to support the idea. Well played, Trent.
Tommy Vallier helps groups, individuals and businesses understand how social media tools can be used to their fullest. He is also a community builder and web developer living in Kingston, Ontario.
Wow! That is so cool! I’m actually considering getting the remix package now. I would love to tweak with it, learn some stuff from it. Does it still have the garageband files that he did with previous stuff?
I don’t usually listen to NIN but I bought the $5 download and I like it. The music is all instrumental, and a few of the songs sound sort of like Sigur Ros. I hope more artists do something like this to help hasten the end of the big music companies.