Nine Inch Nails are back with another free release; this time, it’s an upcoming album release called "The Slip". And NIN continue to give us the kinds of formats we like, with the income this time coming entirely from physical sales:

the music is available in a variety of formats including high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE. your link will include all options - all free. all downloads include a PDF with artwork and credits.

for those of you interested in physical products, fear not. we plan to make a version of this release available on CD and vinyl in july. details coming soon.

The Slip Minisite (NIN)

Okay, 24/96 WAV files seem sort of like overkill, but it’s nice to have these other options.

Updated: It also seems that NIN has used a Creative Commons attribution / non-commercial / share alike license, so you can remix their track for non-commercial purposes, free. (That’s quite a lot more generous, I’m afraid, than Radiohead in their remix contest — the objection from many observers wasn’t just that Radiohead was charging for the stems of “Nude” separately, but that they retained copyright ownership to remix artists’ work.)

One thing no one seemed to mention about the previous NIN release Ghosts was that the content of the music had taken a different and presumably non-commercial direction, meaning the new distribution method was basically a necessity. I enjoyed that direction, and a lot of you evidently did, too.

But judging by the way this is spreading through the Web, I think we’ve learned that there’s a three-step method to making music distribution a success: 1. give people something free, then hope for sales of something else, 2. give them access to the formats they want, 3. be Nine Inch Nails. Now if only #3 were a bit easier.

Eliot Van Buskirk of Wired points out that RIAA numbers show that records are on the rise again, after two years of declining sales. No, I’m not just using the old-fashioned term "records" to refer to something else — I mean records, as in vinyl, as in big round things with grooves that you put on phonographs. $22.9 million worth of retail value moved in records in the US alone — not a huge industry, necessarily, but nothing to be sneezed at, either. By the way, even though the CD industry is shrinking fast, $7.5 billion of CD albums were sold in 2007. So the record industry has every right to be scared by rapidly-depleting sales — and every opportunity to be intrigued by the money that might be made on digital (which, totaling all different formats, was well over $2 billion).

In fact, here’s one for you: online digital growth outpaces CD shrinkage by a factor of greater than 2:1. It’s tough to project rates forward, but that should be a good sign.

RIAA Admits Vinyl Sales Are Climbing [ Wired.com Listening Post ]

I think the vinyl anomaly, though, is brilliant for a whole number of reasons. What you read in the press about the music biz is pretty one-dimensional. We’re expected to believe the industry is collapsing, and sales are down. The reality is much more complicated. Here are some other factoids you can extract from the RIAA’s 2007 sales figures in the news of the weird category:

• High-def audio formats have completely failed — so much that cassette sales are equivalent to units of SACDs and DVD Audio combined.
• More money was spent on mobile downloads than single downloads elsewhere — thanks to the fact that they’re so ridiculously expensive, of course.
• People spent nearly as much on vinyl records in 2007 as they did on music videos online ($28.2 million).

So, here’s to the cassette and the vinyl record. And what does all this really demonstrate? To me, it’s a blunt reminder that what the record industry has failed to do is successfully transition to new media and new, more diverse audiences. When cassette sales started to deteriorate with the introduction of the CD, no one said the industry was doomed then. Vinyl was a great format, which is why it’s still alive. The online formula is starting to come together, but it’s just not quite there yet. And given that most of the industry’s money still comes from CDs, it seems like it’s likewise time to figure out how to get more mileage out of that format and slow the decline, rather than obsess over it, while continuing to work on new formats.

Photo: Michelle’s House of Disco.

It seems Warner exec Jim Griffin was unprepared for the rancor of the Interwebs, because he’s backpedaling on a proposal to create a blanket fee for ISPs on music. All of that was just part of a “dynamic conversation,” says Griffin in a statement, and “It would be unfortunate if a creative and fruitful dialogue were sidetracked by a rush to judgment about what was simply my own illustrative example of one of many concepts I have in this space.”

Yes, indeed — it’d be unfortunate if a discussion of a hair-brained scheme with no plan for implementation or investment from any of the stakeholders were derailed by the fact that it was a hair-brained scheme with no plan for implementation or investment from any of the stakeholders.

See some excellent coverage and analysis from CNet News.com’s Greg Sandoval.

And as Sandoval notes, “What happens is that people hear the word “tax” and objective analysis goes out the window. People condemn and vilify. Out comes the torches and pitchforks.” That lack of objectivity is what frustrated me yesterday, even without being a specialist on the legal details

Of course, I disagree with Griffin about what happens to the “dynamic conversation” when people bring out the pitchforks. He says people lose the opportunity to “consider a variety of raw concepts without prejudice.” I say they lose the opportunity to consider just how out of touch with reality his proposal is.

I’ll never fully understand technology bloggers when it comes to music policy. Here’s an obviously stupid idea: Warner Brothers, the label, comes up with a scheme to add a surcharge to ISP bills to allow, supposedly, “legal” use of music file sharing services. Stupid, yes.

Here’s the response from Michael Arrington (Techcrunch): “It’s clearly good for the music labels, who are facing their imminent extinction.” He claims that this is the plan the “labels” (actually one label) don’t want you to know (except that they’re sitting down for long interviews with Conde Nast Portfolio).

Gizmodo’s Matt Buchanan just regurgitates and further oversimplifies Arrington’s argument, and adds a picture of a kitten at gunpoint, concluding: “And as Arrington points out, it would basically freeze innovation in the industry, meaning labels would be able to ream them that much harder. Not to mention, thanks to the fine print, we’d probably no longer own our music. But that’s the whole point.”

Apparently, “imminent extinction” means multi-billion dollar industry. (In fairness, the industry often — inexplicably — argues the same thing. I wish I were part of an “extinct” multi-billion dollar industry.) And apparently you can’t even talk about the issue of how music will be distributed and paid for without focusing on the desire of said industry to destroy your life and the fact that it’s still completely doomed.

And we’ve already seen Arringtonisms like recordings are worth nothing, and musicians should really owe websites cash for promotion (the Web 2.0 Payola plan, evidently).

But what happened to the obviously stupid idea? I agree with these sites that the plan is bad — I just think, ironically, it’s bad for even more reasons than they think. I’m not actually sure anyone read the original source — I think they were too busy being enraged, or looking for appropriate kitty pictures:

Fee for All: Jim Griffin will lead Warner Music’s fight to tame the Web’s lawless music frontier.

Forget about artists. Forget about copyright holders. Screw the musicians. This is ridiculously stupid even for the labels, partly because they’re unlikely to agree on the idea — meaning the idea is extinct on arrival. “Freeze innovation”? I guess — if the labels actually pursue this. But the blogosphere has become so rabidly anti-label, it’s fighting them instead of pointing out the planet-sized holes in the logic we’re being fed:

Gibson Guitar may require a new column here on CDM, titled something like “what the $&*((*&$ can you possibly be thinking??!”

Sure, it was strange enough when Gibson started a patent dispute with Guitar Hero game developer Activision because it claimed to own the patent for anything “simulating a musical concert experience.” (Jeez, I’m glad Gibson hasn’t been to a couple of my gigs.) Never mind that their patent involved pre-recorded concert footage and a head-mounted virtual reality apparatus and had no similarity whatsoever to Guitar Hero. Never mind that they’ve waited years into this franchise, almost a decade into their patent, and over a decade into music games to both to notice.

Now things get weirder.

Gibson is suing Harmonix, developer of Rock Band. (Unlike Guitar Hero, Rock Band appears to lack a Gibson instrument license — but the suit covers Gibson’s supposed game patents, not Gibson’s guitars.)

And they’re suing Viacom, because Viacom is Harmonix’s corporate parent.

And they’re suing Electronic Arts, the publisher.

And they’re suing GameStop. And Amazon.com. And Toys ‘R Us. And Target. And Kmart.

And they’re suing Wal-Mart. (Oh, I’m sure that will end well. I can’t imagine Wal-Mart is a big outfit with armies of lawyers or anything like that.)

Are you making music without real acoustic instruments? You know, in, like, virtual reality? Then you may have stepped into a strange, alternate dimension. Let’s call it, for the sake of argument, The Gibson Zone. They control the horizontal. They control the vertical. They invented what you’re doing … right now.

Or, at least, that seems to be the message sent by a recent patent dispute between Gibson Guitar Corporation and Guitar Hero developer Activision. (Harmonix, the original Guitar Hero developer, has moved on to Rock Band.)

I know what you’re thinking: maybe Gibson claims to have invented the guitar, or the Guitar Hero controller looks a little too much like an Epiphone or something. Ah, but that might actually make some sort of logical sense, and this is the topsy-turvy world of intellectual property. In fact, both Harmonix and Activision already have licenses with Gibson for their guitars.

Instead, Gibson is arguing they own the rights to anything that can “simulate participation in a concert,” which they patented in 1999. (Look out, air guitar lovers.) Now, I don’t claim to be an expert in patent law, but being the layperson that I am, I would assume the original Gibson patent would have some passing similarity to Guitar Hero.

System and method for generating and controlling a simulated musical concert experience [Google Patents]

Well, let’s review. The Gibson patent is described as follows:

“A musician can simulate participation in a concert by playing a musical instrument…”

Okay, with you so far.

“…and wearing a head-mounted 3D display that includes stereo speakers.”

Nope. Lost. They do know that Guitar Hero is not available for Virtual Boy, right?

PC games — and even Windows customization utilities — make up a much larger market than music software. But in this parallel universe there have been echoes of the challenges facing music developers since the early days of PCs. Both have highly dedicated, niche audiences. Both face rampant piracy. Neither has the support of big business sales as the likes of Adobe and Microsoft do. Many of the customers use the products in their free time, rather than as tools that generate revenue. (Sorry, but it’s true.) Both have, let’s face it, customer bases who often don’t have that much money to spend, period — particularly after a hefty hardware investment.

And both gamers and musicians have been the target of aggressive anti-piracy campaigns, campaigns that get to the heart of the debate over software DRM, and very often blame pirates for failing business models.

Stardock, a “boutique” developer with a rabid following of sci-fi strategy gamers, finally spoke out. And they had good reason: a game with absolutely no DRM made it to one of the top three spots in the country.

Piracy & PC Gaming

There are real lessons for the potential of future music software development, not only in terms of piracy, but in terms of building future businesses.

There are two phenomena right now on the Interweb. One: access to self-distribution (for artists and small labels) means artmakers can explore new models for the business that supports their work. Two: an open market for ideas (the blogosphere, namely) means if you can come up with some pithy something or other, you can achieve overnight fame. Of course, the former is considerably tougher than the latter. And don’t make that idea too complicated or nuanced, because you’ll lose the link-happy bloggers impatient for you to help topple the conventional Record Industry.

Latest case in point: Kevin Kelly posits the notion of 1,000 True Fans as the magic number you need to support yourself as an artist:

Trent sez: “Buy all these music formats from meeeeeeeeeee!” Photo: Jenna Foxton.

Artists are known to mouth off a bit about the Future of Music and Digital Distribution and whatnot, but Trent Reznor is putting his money — and not money — where his mouth is.

Nine Inch Nails Menu of Ordering Options for Ghosts I-IV

via Mashable: Practice What You Preach: Nine Inch Nails Gives Away New Album

And they certainly have their bases covered with their new album “Ghosts”:

• Get the first volume of the album free on torrent sites (or via the NIN site)
• Pay US$5 for a download of all 36 tracks (take that, Radiohead!)
• Get a 2 CD box set for US$10 (which also includes immediate full download of the tracks)
• US$75 gets you the 2 CDs, a data DVD with the digital tracks, and a Blu-Ray disc with 96/24 stereo and accompanying slideshow
• US$300 Adds four LPs on vinyl, two prints, and Trent’s John Hancock — limited-run 2500 pieces

I think they should have just kept going. You know, $800 gets you cassette tapes, Pro Tools session files, 8-tracks, surround sound. $50,000 adds an IMAX film (projector not included) and one of those little plastic mini records. $500,000 adds a DIY planetarium show, plus a special Buddha Box edition and a low-power FM radio transmitter so you can self-broadcast the album. $1 million and you get a Jaguar pre-loaded with a specially-signed sound system that plays the album, plus reel-to-reel multitracks. $500 million and Trent comes to your house, brings his studio rig and console, and re-records the album for you in your living room.

Before you assume the downloads are worthless, though, even the torrent file includes PDF “liner notes” and 320 kbps MP3 files. Buy the download and you have an option of either FLAC lossless or Apple Lossless audio — something I know readers here have complained about.

There’s only one problem. The fact that musical superstars are experimenting with various formats amounts to great research into what people may want. But if you’re not a Nine Inch Nails junkie, this is all awfully … well, complicated. For lesser-known artists, it seems like finding just one or two solutions that make most people happy is a better route, and it’s not clear what those are yet.

I’m personally most interested to see how the torrent thing works. Then again, with bandwidth costs plummeting, serving up your own audio — even lossless audio — becomes a viable option for artists and small labels. And so far, the torrent doesn’t seem to be cannibalizing the for-fee options, as NIN’s site says they’re experience high volume of traffic and orders. If enough people spring for the higher-cost options, the free versions may pay for themselves.

By now, you’ve likely heard that Apple’s iTunes Music Store has taken the #2 spot in music sales — all music sales – right behind retailer giant Wal-Mart. This tends to lead to one of two somewhat gloating reactions from Apple advocates. One is a sort of “rah, rah, go Apple!” attitude. The other is along the lines of “hurrah, discs are dead, go throw your CDs in with your eight tracks and vinyl while we leap into the future!”

A typical sentiment comes from Scott McNulty on The Unofficial Apple Weblog: “I have an iPod, an iPhone, an Apple TV, and I manage all my music with iTunes as I am sure many, many other people out there do as well… “

Eep. Any votes for “I have a Sony Cassette Walkman, a cheap mobile phone, a … TV, and I manage all my music on my bookshelf”? Is that more boneheaded nostalgia?

Of course, it wasn’t supposed to be this way — any of this.