NEW NINE INCH NAILS RECORD AVAILABLE — RIGHT NOW!!

Nine Inch Nails only-man Trent Reznor has gone and backed up his long-held claim that once he was free from the clutches of the evil record labels he would release new music the moment it was finished. Two weeks ago he posted on his blog a cryptic message titled simply “2 weeks” with no other text. Interwebs speculation ran rampant — would Trent announce a tour, the beginning of a new project, or would he actually release a new album? Well, we found out one day early — yesterday at 4:47pm Trent posted another blog entry titled “Ghosts I – IV” with only the following text:

The new Nine Inch Nails record is available RIGHT NOW.

Well holy shit! Apparently word spread so quickly that a mere hour later Trent posted an update saying that demand was so high the servers had been overloaded and they were working to fix the problem. We haven’t had a chance to listen yet, but we hear Ghosts I – IV consists of 4 sets of 9 instrumental tracks each. The first is available for free download via the link above. The rest can be purchased via a version of the pay-as-you-wish pricing model Radiohead used, and Trent did with his Saul Williams collabo; you can purchase the rest for a minimum of $5 for downloads, or whatever you want to offer, up to $300 for a physical autographed copy.

Let’s hand it to Trent for a) sticking by his word, and b) being the man. How do you think this experimental business model will do? Will fans buy the deluxe versions? Can an artist be successful without the typical run-up of PR, videos, etc?

-VN