Music fans of the world, unite. The very cool Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails (or who basically IS Nine Inch Nails), is letting fans download the entire new album The Slip free at the NIN website. This is one further slap in the face to the RIAA, and a move that will no doubt shake up the archaic music industry even further.

If you're a lover of great rock music (NIN is classified as industrial rock I believe), you can't miss out on this one. Click here to sign up , the download link will be sent to your email.

Slip

The album The Slip has the following track listing.

  1. 999,999
  2. 1,000,000
  3. letting you
  4. discipline
  5. echoplex
  6. head down
  7. lights in the sky
  8. corona radiata
  9. the four of us are dying
  10. demon seed

Run time is 43:45. This is from the website:

as a thank you to our fans for your continued support, we are giving away the new nine inch nails album one hundred percent free, exclusively via nin.com.

the music is available in a variety of formats including high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE. your link will include all options - all free. all downloads include a PDF with artwork and credits.

for those of you interested in physical products, fear not. we plan to make a version of this release available on CD and vinyl in july. details coming soon.

Now, unlike NIN's Ghosts I-IV, fans have NO option available to pay for The Slip, not even $5. There are no retail partners either. Trent is actively encouring fans not only to download the songs for free, but to recreate and remix the songs as they please. 

I'm no fan of illegal downloading, so this is great for me. But it also represents a step towards a new way for artists to share music with fans, whilst making the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) rethink their entire structure. Sure, they have been hit hard by file sharing, but I am reminded of a recent story that surfaced in which the RIAA basically went into the realm of, dare I say it, crazy?

Take a look at the following video , some of you may have seen it before...


See anything wrong with that? Well, the RIAA did and sued, yes sued, the mother of 18 month old Holden Letz for copyright violation of the Prince song. This is not a joke, you can read about it here . What seems to be happening is that the RIAA can't stop the way people are now listening and sharing music, so they're doing what they can to recoup their losses...even if that means filing ridiculous lawsuits.

Change is coming. Either the RIAA accepts it and finds a way to go with it, or they face extinction. I leave you with a quote from a much overlooked film, Other People's Money starring Danny DeVito. This rings true in so many ways.

"You know, at one time there must've been dozens of companies making buggy whips. And I'll bet the last company around was the one that made the best goddamn buggy whip you ever saw. Now how would you have liked to have been a stockholder in that company? You invested in a business and this business is dead. Lets have the intelligence, lets have the DECENCY to sign the death certificate, collect the insurance, and invest in something with a future."