Nine Inch Nails, New Kids on the Block, Prince's '21 Nights'

NEW NINE INCH NAILS: Trent Reznor has done it again, releasing more Nine Inch Nails music straight to the Web. Only this time, it's free.

The album, "The Slip," is said to be a bit more "song-oriented" than "Ghosts I-IV," which Reznor unveiled a few months back. Reznor writes on his website that "The Slip" is a "thank you to our fans" and notes -- in bold print -- that's it's "one hundred percent free."

The music is available in variety of formats, including MP3, FLAC or 24-bit, 96-kHz WAV files, which are said to be sound better than a CD, although I haven't been able to test it (the download link arrived in about 90 minutes). A CD/vinyl edition will be available in July.

Why the good cheer? Perhaps because Reznor announced back in March that his multivolume set of instrumental music, "Ghosts I-IV," brought in more than $1.6 million in revenue in one week alone.

With the release of "The Slip," Reznor has once again gone without label entanglements, taking advantage of a release schedule that probably would not have been possible had he remained signed to Interscope.

In April of last year, Reznor released the vastly underappreciated "Year Zero," his last new album for Interscope. But now free of label contracts, Reznor has issued two collections in three months, a pace generally unheard of on a major, where getting music to fans comes second behind drafting a marketing plan.

NEW NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK: People.com unveiled a snippet of the return of the New Kids on the Block this morning. Apparently the public cannot be trusted with the full song.

Because I like to do things like buy groceries and pay rent, I agreed to mention the overly produced, stuck-in-the-past nostalgia ballad "Summertime" in this post. It begins with a prom-theme-worthy piano, and soon gives way to some '80s-sounding synths. Then some electronic sounds start to zip back and forth, their presence a halfhearted attempt to modernize the song.

But what sticks is not just how the song is stuck in another era, but how the New Kids on the Block seem to dreaming of the past as well, romanticizing the days when women told them not to "call after 10 p.m."

AND FINALLY, PRINCE: Entertainment Tonight reports that Prince will release his first book, "21 Nights," this fall. Said to chronicle the artist's 21-night stay at London's O2 Arena in 2007, the book will apparently include 124 never-before-seen photographs.

No word yet if the book will be overly priced by about $150, a la Prince concert tickets.

Photo: Courtesy of http://theslip.nin.com/

Nine Inch Nails album released to Web

About 6 p.m. PST on Sunday, Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor released a 36-song instrumental collection, "Ghosts I-IV," direct to the Internet via his official website. The album is available at a number of pricing options, beginning with a free sampling of nine of the songs.

All 36 cuts can be had for as low as $5 (download), or for as high as $300, a signed limited-edition set that will ship in May (pictured). There's also a $10 double-disc CD set, which includes a 16-page booklet and ships on April 8, or a $75 package that includes two discs, a DVD and a deluxe book.

Four hours after launch, site traffic appeared to prevent me from purchasing any of the options, as the site would fail to load when attempting to check out. However, "Ghosts I-IV" is also available via Amazon.com for $5, which downloaded without any hiccups. Reznor utilized TuneCore to deliver the album to Amazon.

This is how Reznor describes the album, the result of a 10-week musical experiment, on his site: "I've been considering and wanting to make this kind of record for years, but by its very nature it wouldn't have made sense until this point. This collection of music is the result of working from a very visual perspective -- dressing imagined locations and scenarios with sound and texture; a soundtrack for daydreams. I'm very pleased with the result and the ability to present it directly to you without interference. I hope you enjoy the first four volumes of Ghosts."

It's long been expected that Reznor would be the next high-profile artist to follow Radiohead's pay-what-you-will, variable pricing model, which the band utilized in October of last year for "In Rainbows." 

Reznor, in fact, has already experimented with the model. Last year, Reznor collaborated with Saul Williams, and released the album, "The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust," online in November, allowing fans to freely download it or pay $5 for a higher quality version. Initial stats released by Reznor revealed that about 80% fans opted not to pay for the album. Radiohead and its management have refused to release any numbers.

Billboard.com is already reporting that "Ghosts I-IV" will receive a traditional retail release on April 8 via Red Distribution. Owned by Sony BMG, Red distributes a number of independent labels, including ATO Records, which released Radiohead's "In Rainbows" on Jan. 1.

Photo courtesy of http://ghosts.nin.com