Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor was all apologies when the servers hosting his bands instrumental opus, Ghosts I-IV, went offline for a short period of time following the March 2nd release. A post on the NiN website read, “Sorry again about the hassle. Somebody kicked the plug out of our internets, but we’re all set now.” Bandwith problems generated by interest in the new album are the most arduous problems the band is contending with at the moment. Sales of Ghosts I-IV have grossed $750,000 in three days which is great, considering portions of the four part project are free to download.
Ghosts I-IV has been made obtainable a number of ways, the cost ranging from free to $300. The band uploaded the first quarter of the project, Ghost I, to the torrent tracking site The Pirate Bay. Digital versions of all four albums are available for $5. For $10 you can get four CD’s (set to ship April 8, 2008) as well as a digital download. Deluxe and ultra deluxe versions of the album are available for $75 and $300 respectively. The deluxe packages boast a Blu-Ray HD slide show version of Ghosts I-IV, a 48 page hardback book, LP’s, and a data DVD with multi track files for audio editing. All 2,500 copies of the signed ultra deluxe albums have sold out. It could be the bands faithful following, it could be the clever sales strategy, it could be the Thom York halo effect, either way it’s working out for NiN in the end.
NiN Website: www.nin.com