NIN Embraces P2P Sharing, Creative Commons

In case you've been under a rock in the past couple of days, Nine Inch Nails, spearheaded by Trent Reznor, recently released their new 36 track 1.8 hour album named "Ghosts I-IV."

What's so special about this?

Well, much like Radiohead's recent album release, NIN has embraced the 21st century and released Ghosts I-IV for free, DRM-free, and to top Radiohead: under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license.

That's right folks, that means you're completely and legally free to share and distribute the whole album for non-commercial purposes.

Trent Reznor didn't stop there; however, he actually went out and made official NIN users on many torrent sites, including The Pirate Bay, what.cd, and waffles.fm to share the album via torrent:

"last night our website had to go down for maintenance for a little while due to the incredible amount of traffic and downloads, and we linked directly to our Pirate Bay torrent as a way for people to get the music while we were offline." Rob Sheridan, Art Director for NIN told TorrentFreak, adding "I noticed our official torrent of Ghosts I was in the top 10 of all torrents on The Pirate Bay last night."

"We use torrents ourselves, and we know that most NIN fans are tech-savvy and familiar with file-sharing, so we want to experiment with ways to use that to our advantage, instead of making the mistake of trying to fight or ignore it, as so many artists and labels do." NIN's Rob Sheridan added.

I myself downloaded the full Ghosts I-IV album via torrent (and, since it's legal, here's the link to that torrent) and was impressed enough to pay the $5 the NIN Ghosts I-IV site asks for in donations.

The bonus to paying the $5? I got to download the full album from the NIN servers in DRM-free Apple Lossless format, giving me a pristine audio quality album.

If physical media is more your thing, NIN also has options for you: a $10 2xCD set with booklet; and a deluxe $75 set with a hardcover slipcase containing 2xCDs, 1xData DVD with the full album in multi-track format, and a Blu-ray disc containing the album in HD 96/24 stereo with accompanying slideshow.

There was also a super deluxe $300 limited edition package that has already sold out.

Reports already peg sales of the album at $1 million or more ($750,000 just from the super deluxe limited edition.)

I hope the music industry listens and learns that embracing new technology and giving your album away without DRM is actually a valid business model.

If they don't, they'll soon go the way of the dodo.

Ghots I-IV Album Site [Nine Inch Nails]
NIN Confirms Uploads to Public and Private Torrent Sites [TorrentFreak]