Regardless of your politics, the recent announcement that Senator Edward Kennedy has a cancerous brain tumor is very sad news.  For those outside the USA, he is the only surviving brother of the late president John F. Kennedy, and he’s been in the Senate for over 40 years.  He has been a passionate and gifted senator, hence his state continually re-electing him.   The cancer he has can be treated, but the treatments usually prolong life for a while, they don’t result in complete remission.  My heart goes out to him and his family, and I wish him strength and luck and prayers as he faces this disease.

—”thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years – this one’s on me” Trent Reznor

And with that, Nine Inch Nails released its latest album, The Slip, entirely for free. It is available as either high quality mp3s, CD-quality Apple Lossless or FLAC files, or as high definition 24-bit, 96kHz WAVE files (this is the quality you’d get on a high definition disc like Blu-Ray). Personally, I downloaded the entire album in both Apple Lossless and the high-def files.

In my opinion, it’s a very well done album. If you liked the single Discipline, you’ll like the record. If you liked the instrumental album Ghosts, you’ll like this album. It’s definitely not Downward Spiral, Fragile-era NIN but I personally love Trent Reznor’s continuing songwriting evolution.

As for releasing the entire album for free, as a fan, I’m exceptionally grateful—this is really top quality music, not a throwaway “freebie” in any way. As a musician, my feelings are a bit more mixed. I believe that sharing your music is always the ultimate goal, which is why you can stream all the Ember After songs for free. When major artists like Nine Inch Nails give music away for free, it’s not too much of a financial hardship—NIN made millions from Ghosts, and NIN is about to embark on a stadium tour that will bring in more millions. But for a small independent band, playing free shows and trying to sell CDs at the door and downloads on iTunes, giving away the music for free means getting nothing back at all. So while its great the NIN album is free, I worry if that contributes to the general driving down of the value of music for those artists who do need to make sales just to try and cover the rent.

Hopefully, intelligent music fans realize that less successful acts don’t have the financial means and freedom that millionaire artists do, and a kind, selfless act like giving away this excellent album won’t have repercussions on other groups that are trying to sell music. Because ultimately, I’m thrilled with what Trent did.