“Each label, like apartheid, multiplies us by our divide and whips us ’til we conform to lesser figures. What falls between the cracks is a pile of records stacked to the heights of talents hidden from the sun. (…) And the only way to choose is to jump ship from old truths and trust dolphins as we swim through changing ways.”
— Saul Williams, in his notes accompanying the free release of his album ‘The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!’, November 2007
I’ve never been much of a fan of Trent Reznor’s music, but his experiments in gift economy really caught my attention. A few months ago (see previous post) Reznor gave away part one of Nine Inch Nails’ four part album ‘Ghosts I-IV’, as well as Saul Williams’ latest album, on which he collaborated. He now does the same with the NIN new album ‘The Slip’, which is available for free as low quality MP3’s, but also (as torrents) with Lossless compression (FLAC or Apple) or as 24-bit, 96 Kbps WAV files that sound better than the CD would have, if Reznor had bothered to release one yet (vinyl and CD versions will go on sale in July, according to the site). All versions come with a printable PDF with the album cover, the track listing, and artwork for each track. Not only is it available for free, but it was released under the Creative Commons “attribution non-commercial share-alike” license. Remixes can be uploaded, shared, listened to, rated, discussed via the community platform remix.nin.com. You can also download some remix tools, create profiles, podcasts and playlists.
In the introductory notes Reznor writes: “thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years – this one’s on me”. As this kind of generosity is hard to resist, I might give the album a listen. If this was part of the intention, it’s working.