So, was it last year that Radiohead did that strange pay us what you feel we deserve downloadable album? I'm not a Radiohead fan, but I am a fan of bands taking control of their own content. Especially bands that have a large enough following that they could make it going the traditional one penny on the sale for me, the rest goes to the record company way. It was a cool move, and I applauded it.

Now, Nine Inch Nails does something similar. Only, in typical Trent Reznor fashion, NiN pulls it a different way. Basically, you still pay them what you feel they deserve, but if you feel they deserve five bucks, you get a set of high quality downloads in your choice of formats plus a PDF booklet. If you feel they deserve $10, you get a set of CDs and a sixteen page booklet, plus download. If you feel they deserve $75, you get hard copies in all sorts of formats, plus your choice of downloads. And, if you'd been on the ball, were completely insane for them, and had $300 laying around just waiting for something to throw it at, you could have gotten the limited edition ultra-deluxe version, whatever that was.

Now, as someone who's been on the creation side of music for a good number of years, I kind of dig the idea. The $300 ultra-deluxe version seems like a bit of hubris, but then, if your someone as popular as them, you're not only allowed, it's reinforced by selling out of that version within a couple days.

Aside from all that, this is outside the control of the RIAA. The truth is, as Trent himself has said various places, the RIAA simply wouldn't allow something like this to come out in any format because it can't be easily chucked into one of their pre-fabbed niches. NiN is kind of odd quantity anyway, but this is odd even for them. It's the type of thing that, given infinite resources, I'd love the chance to do. Ten weeks of nothing but writing and playing and recording music. I've referred to this sort of thing as auditory paintings in the past, though I never get more than about three hours at a time to do my own. He refers to them as "dressing imagined locations and scenarios with sound and texture; a soundtrack for daydreams."

Whatever you want to call it, it's an artist taking control of their work, and that, to me, is cool. I'll probably rock the five and if I like it, maybe I'll pop 'em a tenner for the simple hard-copy release later. I don't think I'm crazy enough to throw seventy-five bucks at any musical act at the moment. Except my own.

The best part of this is that even the five dollar download only option, taking hosting fees and everything into account, they're likely making more money off of this release per-sale than they would if it were released the traditional way. And I'm alright with that.

I'm not a shiny-happy person. I don't think everything's going to be OK. But when I see someone make a move like this I can't help but take a moment to smile and think, "that's cool."

BREAK

Through experimentation and such I think I'm getting close on my crappy song. The mix I'm sitting at today sounds OK, but the guitars are too low and everything else is too high. But that's an easy fix that'll be taken care of as soon as I get home.

My next purchase will be some monitors though. This having to wait until I hear it on a variety of other stereos to be sure shit is starting to really bother me.

Once I'm satisfied with this, I'll be able to transpose settings and start cutting officious demos and shit. Then, like, months down the road, when I've had five minutes to let them sit and come back and un-screw up the demo versions, I'll do something with them. What I'm not certain, but something.

Burn them to CD and lock them away in my player never to be heard by anyone else? That'd probably be for the best, so I won't do that.

BREAK

This morning, work has been insane. Over-the-top nutso. Purchasing gal was gone on vacation for a week and some days so she comes back and her profile is gone. Happens every time her computer gets rebooted. Oh, it's still out there on the server, it just can't be accessed the first time she logs in. So, recopy everything to her local profile, set up her Outlook again, set up her 400 access again, blah, blah, blah, log her back out, log her back in, and then it works. We have to go through this about ten times a month with her. And we can find no solution.

Then bitchidiot (all one word) calls from the training center down the road. She can get the control PC started, but the screens won't come up. And she's blind-panicked. "Training starts at eight, what am I gonna do?" So, I run over there to pat her on the back and calm her down and turns out she didn't switch the screens from DVD/VCR input to PC input. That's it. Me am pissed.

Then one of our favorite kids from upstairs calls. I used to be in IT so I should know better boy. He used to fix PCs at the Y. Which admittedly is a step up from our previous I used to be in IT person, who used to run the printer for a motel. Anyway, this douchenozzle keeps logging into the 400 to check his schedule, panicking when something isn't right and closing in a way that leaves the session stuck out there until the next timeout period is up. But, see, the panic is there, so he clicky-clickies to try and bring the session back up. Over and over. So we get a bazillion frozen sessions hanging out on the 400 for his system.

So, twelve hours later, after getting all those sessions removed from the system, I call him back and get hit with the I used to be in IT line and just about tell him that he wasn't in IT, he was a PC fixer for a place that didn't understand running a Windows install CD was not that complicated, but I held my tongue. Lord only knows why. I'm losing my touch. Maybe I should ask the wife to stop keeping me so happy so I can be bitchier at work? Nah.

Little hint for the unwashed, telling the IT people that you used to be in IT is a good way to make sure we don't take anything you say seriously. Because people that actually used to be in IT and managed to find a way out? They'll never talk about that shit. It'd be like getting out of the secret agent business and then promptly blabbing about how you stole all those government secrets. It's best if nobody else knows. We'd wipe our own memories, but we haven't found a safe way to eliminate just that part of our minds. Selective alcohol treatments are being conducted as experiment, but it's gonna take more time to perfect. A lot more.

Enough. Time to find out what Zippy plans to blowup for the day.