Trent Reznor’s goals for this summer’s Nine Inch Nails tour — his first major trek since dropping one of the best albums of his career for free in The Slip — are modest. “I want you to leave feeling like your head exploded,” Reznor told Rolling Stone’s Gavin Edwards during rehearsals. Click below for more from Reznor, including why he doesn’t like the pay-what-you-want model for selling albums.

• Tour Preview: Trent Reznor Rolls Out New Nine Inch Nails Tour

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The Forum used to be the home arena of the Los Angeles Lakers, but last Saturday, it hosted a very different type of drama: 500 invited guests in a largely empty building got to see the dress rehearsal for Nine Inch Nails’ “Lights in the Sky” tour debuting tonight at the Pemberton Festival in British Columbia, and having its full opening show tomorrow in Seattle at the Key Arena. (Rock Daily will be live at both shows, so stay tuned for coverage).

Before the show, Trent Reznor came out in a gray hooded sweatshirt and addressed the crowd, explaining that they were trying out various material, so some parts of the show might not ultimately make it on tour, and that there might be some technical glitches: “Lots of things are going to happen that aren’t, let’s say, intentional.” He concluded, “I’m going to go backstage and throw up, and then I’ll see you guys.”

The two-hour show was astonishing, covering a wide range of Nine Inch Nails’ material, from “Head Like a Hole” through new songs from The Slip and instrumental pieces from Ghosts, which Reznor had never planned to play live. About a third of the way through the concert, Reznor deployed some video screens, but not to enlarge his face for the cheap seats: sometimes the band played in front of a desert backdrop, sometimes the screens responded to the music with colored bubbles (like Guitar Hero in reverse), sometimes the musicians vanished behind a wall of static.

“On stage, it’s very easy to tell when you lose people’s attention,” Reznor told RS later. (more…)

Last week, Trent Reznor snuck up on everybody when he unleashed the new Nine Inch Nails album The Slip on the Internet for free. Click below to find out how Reznor pulled it off, the technology behind it and what other artists might be indulging in this model in the future.

• Nine Inch Nails Surprises Fans With Free Online Album

• Album Review: Nine Inch Nails’ The Slip

[Photo: O’Reagan/Retna]

A mere two months after surprising fans with the web-released Ghosts I-IV and two weeks after surprising radio stations with new single “Discipline,” Trent Reznor and his prolific Nine Inch Nails announced this morning that their hinted-at new album The Slip was available as a free and immediate download. According to Reznor, the album is being given away for free as a “thank you to our fans for your continued support.” The album features ten tracks and is once again licensed by Creative Commons, allowing fans to remix it, repost it and do what they wish with it. Reznor also promises CD and vinyl copies in July.

[Photo: Getty”

The prolific Trent Reznor is back at it. Less than two months after web-releasing the instrumental Ghosts I-IV, Nine Inch Nails sent a brand new song, titled “Discipline,” to radio stations simultaneously around 2:30pm EST today. Reports say the song was just mastered yesterday. And unlike the Ghosts fare, this song actually contains Reznor on vocals. But here’s where things get strange: Venturing back over to nin.com, a post dated April 21st reads “2 weeks!” This “two week” message echoes a similarly mysterious message posted in mid-February that ultimately resulted in the release of Ghosts I-IV. Does Reznor have another new album up his sleeve to accompany “Discipline?” We’ll find out in thirteen days.

[Photo: Getty]

More and more superstar acts are departing major labels to sign deals with other promotion companies (like Madonna’s partnership with Live Nation) or heading out on their own to deliver their music directly to fans (like the recent emancipation of Nine Inch Nails). For the details of the latest deals, as well as the effect this trend will have on the rest of the industry, click here, plus check out our exclusive Q&A with Billy Corgan.

[Photo: Walter/Getty]

Trent Reznor has gone public with the sum total of all the money he made in first week sales after self-releasing his instrumental album Ghosts I-IV: $1,619,420. The album, released on March 2nd in a multitude of different formats at nin.com, “immediately sold out” of its run of 2,500 “Ultra-Deluxe Limited Edition” versions (complete with vinyl, deluxe packaging and a Reznor autograph), each with a $300 price tag. In all, 781,917 transactions were made for the album, with people either downloading a quarter of the album for free, downloading the entire album for $5, purchasing a physical copy for $10 or getting the non-ultra-deluxe limited edition version for $75. Unlike Radiohead, who have still not released the total numbers and dollar figures from their In Rainbows experiment, Reznor likely revealed his first-week stats as a way to show fellow artists in the same weight class how successful they can be without the help of a major label. We’re sure Reznor and Thom Yorke will have a nice laugh about all this if they do in fact headline Lollapalooza. Ghosts I-IV is still available for download on NIN’s site, with double-CD sets due in stores on April 8th.

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[Photo: Getty]

Nine Inch Nails have unleashed a new, thirty-six-song instrumental album called Ghosts I-IV, which is available for download right now. The album, recorded over a ten-week stretch last fall, is what Trent Reznor calls “a soundtrack for daydreams.” “I’ve been considering and wanting to make this kind of record for years, but by its very nature it wouldn’t have made sense until this point. This collection of music is the result of working from a very visual perspective — dressing imagined locations and scenarios with sound and texture,” Reznor said on the Ghosts Web site. “I’m very pleased with the result and the ability to present it directly to you without interference.” Reznor parted ways with his Interscope in late 2007.

Much like Radiohead’s novel In Rainbows sales scheme, Ghosts I-IV is available in a multitude of different formats at different costs. (more…)