These days it seems like you're not a real band unless you give your music away free for a fortnight and then triple the price of your concert tickets for the privilege.
Radiohead did it, The Charlatans are doing it, and now gloomy old Nine Inch Nails are sort of vaguely doing it a bit as well. Sort of. A bit.
Nine Inch Nails are releasing their 36-tack instrumental album Ghosts I-IV on the internet for free, with the option of spending more to upgrade to something a touch swankier. Truly, historians will look back on this day as the moment when Nine Inch Nails really shook up the long-established Miserable Ambient Wank That Nobody Would Have Paid For Anyway industry. That's right Trent! Stick it to the man!
OK everyone, this is getting out of hand. What happened to the days of queueing up outside Our Price on a Monday morning, waiting to stuff £16 directly up the arse of a ponytailed record executive by buying a horrendously overpriced physical copy of an album on the day of its release? Those were the golden days and no mistake.
Now, every single band in the world is crawling over each other to give their music away to fans on the internet in the vain hope it'll make them look as interesting as Radiohead. It doesn't matter that the members of Radiohead only got about 20p each from every copy of In Rainbows sold, because it made them look cool and interesting and new.
And pretty soon, everyone was at it. The Charlatans are giving away their new album for free and even Cliff Richard is dabbling at the old internet discount thing. And now, chronically aware that black-fingernailed self-pitying post-adolescents with a total lack of any basic social skills whatsoever are being hopelessly under-represented by this free internet music revolution, Nine Inch Nails are getting in on the act, too.
Sort of. Nine Inch Nails are releasing new album Ghosts I-IV to fans for free on the internet, but only a quarter of it – if you want the rest you can either pay full price for it, pay seven times the full price for it or pay 30 times the full price for it and get it in a nicer box.
And instead of being an album jam-packed with tunes reminiscent of classic shiny Nine Inch Nails pop hits like The Wretched and that one about wanting to fuck people like an animal, Ghosts I-IV is actually just a collection of self-indulgent instrumental doodles that nobody would have cared a jot about if they got released normally. Chicago Sun Times reports:
"I’ve been considering and wanting to make this kind of record for years, but by its very nature it wouldn’t have made sense until this point,’’ says Reznor, who collaborated on the music with Alan Moulder, Atticus Ross, Alessandro Cortini, Adrian Belew and Brian Viglione. ‘‘This collection of music is the result of working from a very visual perspective — dressing imagined locations and scenarios with sound and texture; a soundtrack for daydreams. I’m very pleased with the result and the ability to present it directly to you without interference."
Even though in equal parts Ghosts I-IV sounds like the soundtrack to a nuclear power station's education centre, a Barratt Homes new development promotional DVD or a YouTube video posted by someone who's planning to stage a high school shooting, we're sure that Nine Inch Nails will nevertheless find an enthusiastic audience for this new album.
But what really scares us is what'll happen next. Perhaps, bored of simply giving music away for free, bands will actually start paying fans to listen to their music. And would you listen to the new Razorlight album if it came with a fiver taped to it? Would you? Would you really? If you just answered yes to that, then we've got the number of a perfectly decent psychiatric facility that we're happy to pass on.
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Ehoh says
You know, I find the new album intriguing to listen to, but at the same time this piece touches the right nerve. Some artists are now caring more about the medium than the content. I would happily listen to kicking music if it came on a mono, crackly old tape or vinyl than listening to dull music on the hot new x format.
If you market shit well, you can feed it to the masses. And I’m afraid that’s the future. For some artists it might lead to creative control, but total creative control can lead to a lack of quality control.
Markie says
I’d listen to a pig killing monkeys in a rape factory with Pete Doherty “singing” one of his “songs” over the top of an industrial background loop if a fiver was attached to it.