funny thing is is all media did this profits would only go down 20-40% across the board.

Another big kudos to Trent for this one!

I'll pick it up later on today.

downloading

sweet

Good to see that they continue to give away their music for free with no RIAA BS :)

In this way is NIN gong to screw the RIAA and a bunch of lawyers ? If so, I love it !!!

---

Give to your fans and your fans will give back. And you will gain more fans. Artists need to be viewed as hard working peers, not businesses out to take as much money from their fans in order to support a lavish lifestyle. Trent is separating himself from the system that has been equated with such greed. I respect an artist whose creativity isn't driven by the dollar. While it's important to make money to survive, it should also be evident that an artist truly loves what he/she does and respects those who listen. It should be more important to reach people on an emotional level, rather than reaching into their pocket. The support will come when the respect has been earned

While I haven't purchased anything from Metallica since the Napster p2p fallout, I do understand where they were coming from at the time. The impact of downloading music was new and not completely understood. And they didn't have the balls to think outside the box and try to understand their fans. It was a knee-jerk reaction to what may have been viewed as a threat to their lifestyle of indulgence. It also doesn't seem to have dawned on them at the time that maybe the system they were a part of was broken. If they did, would they still have launched an all-out attack on their fans, or would they have tried to break free from the chains that bound them? I guess we'll never know.