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"Last time I was here, I was doing a lot of complaining about the ridiculous prices of CDs down here. And that story got picked up and got carried all around the world and now my record label all around the world hates me, because I yelled at them, I called them out for being greedy fucking assholes. I didn't get a chance to check, has the price come down at all? I see a no, a no, a no... Has anyone seen the price come down? Okay, well, you know what that means - STEAL IT. Steal away. Steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealin'. Because one way or another these motherfuckers will get it through their head that they're ripping people off and that that's not right." Source

I bought the Them Crooked Vultures vinyl because it was $5 more than buying the MP3s - and it came with a download of 320kbps MP3s ripped from the vinyl. Out of curiosity, I downloaded CD-sourced FLACs via nefarious means, opened in SoundForge the FLACs, the 320kbps MP3s, and a copy of the vinyl I made from my own turntable running into an M-Audio ProjectMix I/O.

I then took screenshots of the waveforms of these recordings, and overlayed them in Photoshop, setting the overlay to 'difference' and it was pretty clear that the vinyl was actually compressed MORE than the CD version. The second track in the 320kbps vinyl-sourced MP3s also seems to have a big piece of dust on it in the very beginning.

I don't have them online (and I'm at work right now and can't get them) but you can see that I did a similar process here when Nine Inch Nails released a remastered version of The Downward Spiral

The mix on Them Crooked Vultures vinyl is definitely different than the CD - in that if there were a loudness war on, the vinyl would win that battle. If you had made that point with a record I didn't have, I wouldn't really be able to refute your point, but in this specific case, your loudness wars argument does not hold up. CDs have immensely better dynamic range and frequency response than vinyl, and most of the time, vinyl is pressed from CDs anyway.

If you've used up your three downloads, contact support@help.nin.com, although you'll likely get this response: Dear Customer,

Due to overwhelming response, you probably have experienced technical difficulties purchasing or downloading your copy of Ghosts I-IV. We are currently working diligently to address these issues, and will do everything in our power in ensure that your download will be successfully completed. If you have hit your download limit, we will be resetting the download attempts as we resolve the technical issues within the next 24 hours. We do apologize, and thank you for your interest and response to our offerings to the fans of nine inch nails.

http://www.theninhotline.net/

http://www.theninhotline.net/

Now the trick is to keep the info in there. As an aside, I honestly think that moaning the record label is the wrong approach, and that if somehow Timbaland himself can be reached, he would probably reach out to Tempest - maybe send him a SidStation, trade tips on producing bleepy bloopy music. Don't try to talk artistic merit to the suits. And don't think that big artists are completely unreachable and internet-stupid. Then again, I might be spoiled in my own experience, running a Nine Inch Nails website. Know any other sizeable artists who make their Pro-Tools masters available to the public, upload DVD cuts of out-of-print or unreleased video compilations and 320kbps MP3s live collaborations to the Pirate Bay, and was posting to Prodigy news groups back in 1991.

Seriously though, someone should try to contact Timbaland.

9% of our viewers use Mac, 87.3% Windows, 0.6% use Linux. Tada.

We at The NIN Hotline are running a competition that is open to all and everyone (and to win prizes too! OH MY GOSH!). We're closely affiliated with nin.com, so basically we're just saving them time and effort by taking it off their hands. :)

I can tell you that you're absolutely correct. I'm reasonably prominent on the NIN fan base scene (I help out at The NIN Hotline) and it took about an hour before folks had ripped it to uncompressed .wav format so that even the least able members of the NINternet (yes I know how lame that word is) could make their first attempts at remixing a song.

There are thousands of people burning up the chatwaves right now about this. Professional musicians to 17 year old kids are interested. People who are involved in sound technology certainly doesn't have any kind of majority when it comes to Nine Inch Nails and their fan base - it's a complete myth. Same goes for the goths. There aren't as many as people think.

You'd be hard pressed to be more paranoid about this kind of situation than me -- I was once named in a lawsuit by Universal Australia for sending someone an MP3 of a Reznor remix. (nothing ever came of it...) I also had some unhappy dealings with Trent's previous buttwipe management, but that's another story.

I was assured that if any such lawsuit against a fan were to arise, Trent Reznor has veto power and would certainly use it. Otherwise, what's the point of doing this in the first place? Trent did not post this file just so he could get his fans sued.

Hi there, just thought I'd comment on this, I run a big fat nine inch nails website... We were concerned at first about the license, especially the bit about "other distribution of any of these sounds, either as they exist upon downloading, or any modification thereof." This amounts to a cover-your-ass clause... the band and Interscope are encouraging people to remix or whatever with this file. Interscope suggested to the band that they hook up with MySpace for fan distribution of the glut of remixes that will come out, but for one reason or another, that (and the notion of doing this as a contest) didn't happen. So if you do soemthing with these files, you are welcome to host them without fear of the record label coming at you -- otherwise what would the purpose be of doing this in the first place? That being said, I have a PC, and I just extracted the AIFF files... never saw the license ;)