Nine Inch Nails To Give Away 200,000 CDs Of “The Slip”… For Money

The Slip, Nine Inch Nails’ digital album that only cost an e-mail address, will now be available for purchase as a limited-edition Digipak with a DVD and a big neato booklet full of shiny pictures. Dude, Trent, you know the cool thing to do would be to just give all of this away. That would show your fans on the free music forefront that you truly stand for freedom, and provide a positive example for them when they discover that no one wants to pay them for what they do either. You’ll also be able to hear this ProTools epic on vinyl, the amount of copies of which will only be limited by those who think this rather digital recording is best heard in a pure analog state. And the MP3s? Free forever, baby! The future is now!

The appearance of a free MP3 album in the physical marketplace has Coolfer getting a little snippy at folks who would declare the CD dead.

Proving the CD is just more pointless than ever, Nine Inch Nails frontman will release The Slip in the dead format via RED Distribution. The title will arrive to no fanfare on July 22.

This all makes perfect sense. The CD is dead. Has been for years. The old business model is dead. Has been for years. There are no record stores left. Haven’t been for years. The price of recorded music will drop to zero. It has to. Or so I read.

To be fair, TechCrunch acknowledged the potential for “limited edition physical copies of music,” which is exactly what form The Slip is proposed to take. This release isn’t really a sign of Reznor backing off, just giving his most hardcore fans something new to cuddle.

NIN’s ‘The Slip’ Hitting Retail July 22 [Billboard] Reznor To Release Album In Dead Format [Coolfer]