Nine Inch Nails goes the Radiohead way with "Ghosts I-IV"

The band, which recently dumped its record label, is following in the footsteps of Radiohead and using the Web to distribute its latest album. The twist? The first nine tracks of "Ghosts I-IV" are available for free via BitTorrent, with a downloadable version of the entire 36-track collection going for as little as $5.

Listening Post's Eliot Van Buskirk reports that NiN front man Trent Reznor has uploaded the first volume of "Ghosts I-IV" to BitTorrent (a peer-to-peer file-sharing protocol that's home to a potpourri of pirated music, ripped DVDs, and various...well, let's just call it "unauthorized media") for free downloading—an increasingly effective (not to mention no-cost) way of marketing music in lieu of music label support.

Meanwhile, all four volumes of "Ghosts" (a total of 36 tracks) are available as DRM-free MP3s on Amazon.com and the Nine Inch Nails Web site for just $5. If you're looking for something a little more tangible, you can snag a two-CD set of the collection for $10, while for $75, you can scoop up the CDs, downloading instructions for the MP3s, a 16-page booklet, a 40-page PDF, and a DVD with special features. Finally, NiN diehards can get the $300 limited-edition package (which, among other things, includes four 180-gram records, according to Listening Post).

And here's another twist: as Van Buskirk points out, NiN is releasing the album under Creative Commons license, allowing fans to remix the tracks as they see fit (provided the music is used non-commercially).

Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails are following the trail blazed by Radiohead and its "In Rainbows" album, which Radiohead sold over the Web for whatever price fans were willing to pay.

Of course, "In Rainbows" eventually got a traditional release in record stores an online, and it's not clear whether Radiohead actually made much money from its "pay what you want" model.

It'll be interesting to see if NiN stays the course with its "Ghosts I-IV" release. I like the idea of the pricier special-edition releases subsidizing the cheaper MP3 downloads, and the strategy of marketing the album through BitTorrent is a clever one.

But is this an actual business model that'll work for future releases, or are we just talking pie in the sky? Guess we'll have to wait and see.

So, who out there's ready to go buy the DRM-free tracks? And is anyone willing to crack open their wallets for the special editions?

Related:
Nine Inch Nails Gets Creative With Radiohead-Style Release [Listening Post]