NIN Confirms Uploads to Public and Private Torrent Sites
Written by Ben Jones on March 05, 2008The acceptability of P2P took another big step forward over the weekend, as accounts claiming to be ‘the official profile for NIN’ appeared on a number of torrent sites, including The Pirate Bay and the private trackers What.cd and Waffles.fm. NIN has now confirmed that these accounts indeed belong to the band.
The account that was used to upload the torrent, linked to in yesterday’s piece, was from a user called ‘NINofficial‘, and included a text about the release. Similar accounts, named NIN, appeared on the private music trackers what.cd and waffles.fm on Friday, and uploaded the same torrent.
Uploads to torrent sites, claiming to be from the owners of the material are not unheard of, but are also not common. When it has happened, it’s been to public sites, and generally a hoax, which makes people all the more wary when accounts appear, claiming to be ‘official’ or from the people behind it.
However, TorrentFreak has verified that the accounts in question, ‘NIN’ on both waffles and what, and ‘NINOfficial’ on The Pirate Bay, are indeed accounts belonging to the band’s representatives.
“last night our website had to go down for maintenance for a little while due to the incredible amount of traffic and downloads, and we linked directly to our Pirate Bay torrent as a way for people to get the music while we were offline.” Rob Sheridan, Art Director for NIN told TorrentFreak, adding “I noticed our official torrent of Ghosts I was in the top 10 of all torrents on The Pirate Bay last night.”
“We use torrents ourselves, and we know that most NIN fans are tech-savvy and familiar with file-sharing, so we want to experiment with ways to use that to our advantage, instead of making the mistake of trying to fight or ignore it, as so many artists and labels do.” NIN’s Rob Sheridan added. Many sites, too are willing to work with artists with programs such as Mininova’s content distribution platform and What.cd’s ‘Vanity House’.
It is not sure how NIN got invited to both OiNK replacements what.cd and waffles.fm, however, since Trent Reznor himself admitted to be a frequent user of OiNK, he probably signed up at the trackers from the start, and invited the official NIN user.
Of course, not everyone gets this, some news sites have been reporting that the accounts are bogus, or that the torrents, including the official ones, are stealing. An admin of one of the private tracker did have a sobering comment though “It doesn’t help that the full version is available as well on music torrent sites in general.”
screenshot of the official NIN profile at what.cd
Previously: Most Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk9)
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92 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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confirmation is great
yay
fucking news idiots thinking it’s fake. what morons.
I didn’t know What.cd had that “Vanity House” thing. That’s really cool. It’s a section of their forums where bands can post their own albums, with descriptions and torrent links.
My biggest beef with OiNK was “no freely available music”, a rule unfriendly to artists who support filesharing… Glad to see that view changing within the torrent community.
Five bucks for the full set? I’m all over that.
THIS is what the rest of the music (and movie) industry is failing to understand. Their business model is fading, because the product is priced far beyond its value.
Well, they are about to get sued by SOMEBODY
[quote comment="303832"]Well, they are about to get sued by SOMEBODY[/quote]
Who, exactly?
P.S. The register’s now dropped a way in my estimation…
nin suck balls anyway!………..I guarantee not even 1% of the people that download it will ever purchase any of there music……..they’ll soon realise that.
Hey NIN!
If you’re reading this…
can I get a waffles/what invite? :D
@9 shh…you’ll get him banned :P
I’m not much of a music listener, but the ease of spending $5 to download 36 tracks made a nice little surprise gift for the bf. And the respect NIN is showing customers made me feel fuzzy-fluffy about it — like I did something good by spending $5 to easily and hassle-free download an album I have no intention of listening to. Really weird.
[quote]Five bucks for the full set? I’m all over that.[/quote]
Yeah, that’s an extremely great price, and it’s all going to the band, which is great.
Too bad the Register has such a low opinion of those who don’t feel like paying for a freely copyable resource.
And if anyone from the Register is reading: I’m a musician, and have never charged a red cent for performances that ain’t live, kthx.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0AfdlCQidE
good for nin.
antip2pfagscandienowplz
NIN are probably getting more per purchase now than they did with the label and more purchases at that but i do agree with the “admin” it isn’t really fair having the good one with some tracks and the bad one with all tracks and to #8 just because 1% of people you know wont buy it doesn’t mean 1% of all wont these guys are leading the music industry into the future just like others (invention of vinyl/cassette tapes/cds) and you shut them down go vent at your RIAA meeting and leave and leave them to get rich
All money which goes directly to an artist or band is STEALING, as it could have gone to the music industry if they had a contract which demanded it, to support them and their starving families, and the poor of the Earth.
Hahaaa! Well now all you honest people out there can rest easy and be assured you are NOT thieves and pirates, because those thieves accusing you have no credibility left.
Btw I don’t know any NIN music, don’t want to know, don’t care, and won’t be going there for free dls.
However their policy is on the right track.
wewt! Lets hope this trend continues with other established bands & artists. They’ve got my $5 :)
ouch, RIAA must be feeling outraged and i bet they contributed to the manipulation of the media to (ridiculously) criticize music lovers who pay and want to directly help and support the artists whose music they love and feel very strongly about.
i predict more and more artists will be doing this and it is a fascinating revolution to watch. especially seeing some of the people being very deluded and crooked in the process while the ones with the right instinct prosper and are the Bill Gates of our time.
never heard your music, NIN, don’t listen to the genre, but you are helping a great cause and are one of the rare artists with the courage to stand up to the labels so you should be greatly respected for that. more artists should gather up the courage and wisdom and learn that there is a SUPERIOR distribution/promotion method out there and artists can do more than just make music but can promote themselves and becoming more profitable at the same time.
note how the media tries to make it seem totally not profitable to make the music and share it for free, making paying a choice. in the future more and more people will be buying via this medium and it will be much more profitable and much more COMFORTABLE for artists to be totally in control of everything. thats exactly how it should be.
instead the media should be encouraging people to buy music they enjoy and support artists they love directly instead of calling them retards (implicitly).
i thought that UK paper was reputable but obviously they have some fools working there by allowing that ridiculous article in their music section.
btw, $5, fuck it i’ll buy it, its only $5, i think everyone who supports p2p should buy it, its very affordable. who cares if i may not listen to it more than once (and even then maybe not completely)? the reason i’m buying is i want to send a message that THIS IS THE WAY TO DO IT and this is where the PROFIT is, which is all that the corporations are concerned about. we need to all support those who support a common cause, even if you don’t particularly like the music.
the worst that can possibly happen is you “wasted” $5, and the best is you’re being part of a remarkable revolution and supporting an artist that is part of it, helping change the whole way things are done in the music industry.
i hope this message gets the point across…
tl;dr.
I’m not a HUGE NIN fan, but I’ve spent way more than five bucks on stuff I like less than Trent Reznor in my time, so that’s well spent pocket change in my book.
To those that don’t know, NIN is no longer under contract with ANY record label. NIN is fully on their own. That is how Trent is able to do this. Therefore the RIAA can’t do anything about this.
Trent has said “We encourage you to share the music of Ghosts I with your friends, post it on your website, play it on your podcast, use it for video projects, etc. It’s licensed for all non-commercial use under Creative Commons.”
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4061815/Nine_Inch_Nails_-_Ghosts_I-IV_2008_FLAC_Lossless
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4061815/Nine_Inch_Nails_-_Ghosts_I-IV_2008_FLAC_Lossless
yo
Good for them! They will reach far more people using this modern distribution method, so even if only 1% of downloaders pay for it, the 1% is from a larger pool of listners.
Wouldnt be at all suprised if they make more money this way over the long term…
As we all know, some people will still want the physical CD as well. Perhaps a good business model would be for the band to offer to send a physical CD to anyone who wants it for an additional charge?
This would keep everyone happy (exept the record labels…nyaaaa!)
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