The Music Tank

Nine Inch Nails is the next big one to distribute their new album as free downloadable content.  The band has just released the first volume of their new album “Ghosts” on BitTorrent sites as a free download. The band encourages its fans to share the album with friends, post it on websites and play it on podcasts, TorrentFreak reports.

Frontman Trent Reznor describes the project in the release notes of the official "Ghosts" website, where is it completely available through streams :

This music arrived unexpectedly as the result of an experiment. The rules were as follows: 10 weeks, no clear agenda, no overthinking, everything driven by impulse. Whatever happens during that time gets released as... something.

We began improvising and let the music decide the direction. Eyes were closed, hands played instruments and it began. Within a matter of days it became clear we were on to something, and a lot of material began appearing. What we thought could be a five song EP became much more. I invited some friends over to join in and we all enjoyed the process of collaborating on this.

The end result is a wildly varied body of music that we're able to present to the world in ways the confines of a major record label would never have allowed - from a 100% DRM-free, high-quality download, to the most luxurious physical package we've ever created.

You can get the first volume for free on the website, download volumes 1 through 4 for 5$ or even get the four volumes on a 2 CD set for a mere 10$.

I have to warn you that the site in being pounded by everyone at the moment and has loading issues. The .Zip file of the free volume 1release I downloaded was corrupted. However, “Ghosts” being released under a non-commercial Creative Commons license you can find it in the Internet's shady places. You know what to do (at least for the first volume).