A short story about how the music industry has changed (though not all of them have recognized this yet). Earlier this evening, a Twitter message alerted me to the Ghosts instrumental album that was released by Nine Inch Nails today, completely announced. I had been curious about Trent Reznor’s plans, as he had previously voiced his discontent with (and freedom from) the music industry. So when I checked out Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts website, I was not disappointed....
Once and for all, Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor sticks it to the music industry. Yesterday, he posted the following text on the Nine Inch Nails home page: Hello everyone. I’ve waited a LONG time to be able to make the following announcement: as of right now Nine Inch Nails is a totally free agent, free of any recording contract with any label. I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate....
Last month I blogged about DRM-free Online Music Stores. Well, today Amazon unveiled their own MP3 music store: amazonmp3 Even though it’s been a while since a new Amazon feature has blown me away, I have to say I am very impressed with amazonmp3! They only offer DRM-free music in MP3 format, generally encoded using 256kbps. The website is laid out well, all songs are previewable, it is fast, and the navigation is well-thought-out and conveniently enables both searching and browsing for music....
Techcrunch posted a nice article on finding DRM-dree music online. I have long been frustrated with the state of online music sales. While I love iTunes, I have never used the iTunes Music Store because I refuse to buy any DRM-crippled songs. The fact that Apple recently made EMI’s catalog available without DRM is a step in the right direction, but unfortunately most of the music I listen to is on smaller labels....
I just noticed that one of my favorite Industrial bands, Project Pitchfork, is offering a downloadable version of their latest album “Kaskade” for sale, in addition to the usual CD edition. Apparently the downloaded version consists of high quality 192kbps MP3 files without DRM or anything. A PDF version of the cover is included as well. At $9.99, the price is reasonable (the current price for the CD at Amazon is $15....