A Refinement of Sorts . . .
Nothing new about artists giving their music away on the Internet. Even when it’s somebody famous, like Trent Reznor. The seal has been broken, the trail has been blazed, and we can move on. The interesting thing about the latest album download from his site are the formats in which you can obtain said free download. I chose the lossless Apple (regular mp3 and FLAC are available) and the 24-bit/96 KHz files, just to see what it will work with. Word of warning - the higher-end files use torrents to download, so you have to have a torrent program installed to get it.
I like the direction toward better audio quality files, but I wonder how people will adjust to less room on their iPods (or other portable media players), and if they’ll notice the better quality over their earbuds. Still, the choice is there, and that’s a good move.