While I’ve only ever been a lukewarm fan of the music of Nine Inch Nails, I have a tremendous amount of respect for Trent Reznor and his business model. Today he announced the release of his new album with the following note attached:

“thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years - this one’s on me.”

Not only is the album completely free, but it is being released in a variety of formats (including lossless torrent downloads) under the Creative Commons “attribution non-commercial share-alike” license. From the site: “we encourage you to remix it, share it with your friends, post it on your blog, play it on your podcast, give it to strangers, etc.”

And for people like me who devour the NIN album art, a printable PDF of the cover art, the track listings and the individual track artwork is available for download.

On an interesting and related note, Metallica (who previously sued people for copyright infringement and embarked on a crusade to shut down Napster) is considering following NIN and Radiohead in releasing their tracks for free over the internet. Also of note, I think Lars Ulrich is King Douchebag of the Universe.