Enrique Gutierrez

I find this interesting. Nine Inch Nails (NIN) is offering their new CD, Ghost, directly downloadable from their site - not in it’s entirety, of course, but 9 tracks, which I think is awesome.

What else can you do? Download/purchase a few other options - like, the 36 tracks of Ghost I - IV from their site for a measly $5, or go all the way up to ordering actual CD’s and some companion books, etc for some $75+.

I’m listening to it right now and think this is much better than halo 2o. Seems that ol’ Trent is re-finding the roots of what made NIN… well, NIN.

It’s not so much how good the music is, which - it is… It’s the principals behind this release that makes it awesome. Look anywhere online that covers entertainment, and you’ll find talk about this revolutionary release (summary - download free stuff - licensed under the creative commons attribution), and how it will impact the music industry as much as the stunt Radiohead pulled last year… Then check the Health sections of the news sites… and read about the strokes and heart attacks that major label execs are having as a result.

To hell with them anyway - if all it takes is a savvy web guy, or even someone familiar with a WYSIWYG application, you can make things happen. I know I’ve been doing this - working on a project with a local artist, Jane Baik - to launch her online label, The Republic of Love. I mean… Labels are used to distrubute music to the masses and promote… Uh… MySpace and a website will pretty much get you started on that foot on your own anyway - so why give some assclown a 90% of your creativity for something as useless as a CD?

Some random findings that I won’t quote, but will … paraphrase:

LA Times - 58% of all teens bough zero CD’s in 2007.

PirateBay - The RIAA is just pissed that we thought of a way to generate revenues from their product before they did…

Jane Baik - I’m not signing with a label, they’re pretty much worthless

Yea - this has been a long time coming, and the life-after-death album name, “Ghost”, so elegantly works with this revolution in the music industry - which is finally going to cater to delivering the artists’ art, as well as thinking of (and thanking) the consumer.

*Applause*