{"id":2393,"date":"2008-05-05T12:47:59","date_gmt":"2008-05-05T17:47:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=2393"},"modified":"2008-05-05T12:47:59","modified_gmt":"2008-05-05T17:47:59","slug":"trent-reznor-doubles-down-on-the-web","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2008\/05\/05\/trent-reznor-doubles-down-on-the-web\/","title":{"rendered":"Trent Reznor doubles down on the Web"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Not long after Radiohead offered their new album <em>In Rainbows<\/em> through their website for whatever fans wanted to pay, Nine Inch Nails&#8217; frontman Trent Reznor took a similar approach with a new album he produced by hip-hop artist Saul Williams. The response was relatively lacklustre, however, with less than 20 per cent of those who downloaded the tracks paying even $5 for them, and from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.news.com\/8301-10784_3-9847788-7.html\">some of the interviews<\/a> he gave about the experiment, it sounded as though Reznor wasn&#8217;t all that happy with the way things turned out.<\/p>\n<p>The singer\/songwriter hasn&#8217;t pulled back from experimenting with Web releases, however &#8212; in fact, just the opposite. In March, he released a new instrumental album called <em>Ghosts I-IV<\/em> as a combination download and physical product; fans could opt for a series of offerings, all the way from mp3 tracks at $5 to a deluxe package for $300, which included signed cover art. Even though nine of the tracks were released for free through the BitTorrent network, more than 2,500 bought the deluxe version and Reznor <a href=\"http:\/\/hypebot.typepad.com\/hypebot\/2008\/03\/reznor-rakes-in.html\">said he made $1.6-million<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In gratitude, the NIN frontman has released his latest album, <em>In Slip<\/em>, as a free download. A message on <a href=\"http:\/\/dl.nin.com\/theslip\/signup\">the download site<\/a> says &#8220;As a thank you to our fans for your continued support, we are giving away the new Nine Inch Nails album one hundred percent free.&#8221; The album can also be streamed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ilike.com\/artist\/Nine&#043;Inch&#043;Nails\/album\/The&#043;Slip\">through iLike<\/a> (something R.E.M. also did with their latest album). Radiohead, meanwhile, said recently that the &#8220;pay what you want&#8221; release of In Rainbows &#8212; which Reznor <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/2008\/03\/17\/trent-reznors-radiohead-smackdown\/\">criticized<\/a> as &#8220;insincere&#8221; and a &#8220;bait-and-switch tactic&#8221; &#8212; was &#8220;a one-off&#8221; and won&#8217;t be repeated.<\/p>\n<p><b>Update:<\/b><\/p>\n<p>My friend David Usher, a musician who writes a blog about social media at CloudID, says Radiohead and Trent Reznor have the resources to do whatever they want with their music, but that doesn&#8217;t really help up and coming artists <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cloudid.com\/2008\/05\/09\/nin-and-radiohead-stunts-are-not-a-new-model-enough-already\/\">find a new business model<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"syndication-links\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not long after Radiohead offered their new album In Rainbows through their website for whatever fans wanted to pay, Nine Inch Nails&#8217; frontman Trent Reznor took a similar approach with a new album he produced by hip-hop artist Saul Williams. The response was relatively lacklustre, however, with less than 20 per cent of those who &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2008\/05\/05\/trent-reznor-doubles-down-on-the-web\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Trent Reznor doubles down on the Web&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2393\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}