Music to work by

"Ghosts" is a new instrumental double-cd recently released by Nine Inch Nails, and can be had here.

Trent Reznor is known to disagree with the way the music industry is handled these days, and has done a lot of things that seem to contradict the 'understood' method of music distribution. Like for example, releasing multi-track source files for a bunch of his music for 'average citizens' to remix.

Ghost follows that trend by 1) being released under a Creative Commons license, which means you're free to take it and copy it and share it with your friends. And 2) it's available to download. There are 36 tracks in the entire collection. You can have 9 guilt-free. You can have all 36 for $5. You can also buy physical discs (with all that that entails) for $10.

Even the cd is cheaper than you could get at a store. I have no guilt dropping $5 for 36 good tracks of work music, though.

Interestingly, while the record companies would try to have you believe that only one person would actually pay for the music and the rest of the lazy world would just download it from the first person, NIN has sold out of their $300 package and claims to have made over $1.6 million already. When an artist is making pennies from each cd promoted by a record label, imagine how many discs you'd have to sell to make $1.6 million.

A lot.