So Nine Inch Nails released a new album entitled “The Slip” yesterday completely out of no where. They released a new single “Discipline” about 2 weeks ago which had a message in the file’s ID3 tag saying “Go to www.nin.com May 5″ (yes, I just copied and pasted that directly). Yesterday came around and viola, a brand new album was available for download in MP3, FLAC, M4A and High Quality WAVE 24/96 (clocking in at 1.2 GB in size) formats. Everything but the MP3 version was being distributed via torrents. I don’t even think you can buy the thing in stores for another 2 weeks.
I have to admit, Trent Reznor is pretty brilliant by beating the pirates at their own game. Instead of the album leaking out two weeks early, he put it online himself two weeks early. It’s hard to say if this is really where music is headed though as Trent himself said in an article I read a while back that his experiment with the Saul Williams’s “Niggy Tardust” album didn’t go as planned. Then again, he did make a reported killing on “Ghosts I-IV” but that was because he put out a limited edition deluxe version that sold out and went for a few hundred dollars. So while this approach works for a band as big as nin, it debatable if the idea is for everyone.
I’ve listened to the album and it’s decent. None of the songs have really jumped out at me just yet besides “Discipline”. Maybe if my computer would stop acting retarded I could listen to it a bit more…
