Trent Reznor will not stay out of the free culture spotlight! remix.nin.com takes a sizable portion of Nine Inch Nails’ back catolog and allows registered users to download original multi tracks, which they can then remix however they want. The only “rules” are that users share their creations on the site and that they not include any copyrighted material (unless they own the copyright). According to the FAQs on the site, users may include any Nine Inch Nails song (which I’m assuming includes songs not included on the site) in their remixes.
The band has done this on a smaller scale in the past – the release of “The Hand that Feeds” in Garageband format was something of a first, although they experimented with a flash-based music editing system on a previous project (according to the note from Trent included with the download of “The Hand that Feeds”).
The band is also collecting geographical statistics from users (not required, but encouraged) for future “visualizations” that they claim will be “really cool.” We’ll see what that means. I’m hoping they’re planning on showing the record industry just how many people are willing to be a part of culture when they’re allowed to participate, instead of being treated like slaves and criminals.
Anyway, here’s a band who is not only giving away their music for free, but letting people remix and share it. I’ll be paying close attention to how well “The Slip” does when they finally release the physical CD… I’m going to propose, as a hypothesis, that it’s going to do really well, in spite of the millions of people who will have already downloaded it for free. We’ll see how the RIAA feels about that.
My apologies for the silence recently. I’m in full-throttle essay-writing mode right now. I’m currently 12 pages into 35 pages worth of writing, all of which is due next week! Once that’s done though, I’ll be posting here fairly regularly regarding $P@MM3R!!1! and other creative projects, as well as the progress in designing the Writing Across Media class and redesigning my Desktop Publishing (now called Information Design) class for next semester.
For a long time I’ve held that the concept of intellectual property is a primitive belief that is being manipulated by corporations to control technological and artistic progress and to steal money from artists and other creators. Creative individuals have survived for millennia without huge multinational corporations “protecting” their interests; the ready availability of creative technology and the means to distribute work via the Internet have made these corporations mostly obsolete. Organizations like the RIAA and the MPAA have been pursuing frivolous lawsuits, lobbying governments, and distributing ridiculous propaganda in an attempt to maintain control of their industries.
Ok. I’m going to step down from my soapbox. Here’s a video produced by some creative folks over in Europe as a response to some of the aforementioned propaganda.
