The latest step in the bickering between Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails is last week's announcement by the Brits that they'll be encouraging fan remixes of "Nude," the second single from "In Rainbows."

Of course, this is one instance where Trent would absolutely get our vote in the Wired contest, because he's been doing this ever since he released "With Teeth" way back in 2005. In fact, he even had a highly publicized spat with his record label over concerns related to the launch of a web site specifically dedicated to fan remixes -- which he eventually won thanks to a "You can't stop me" approach adopted right around the release of "Y34RZ3R0R3MIX3D," a remix record made up of songs from "Year Zero."

Now, Radiohead is also doing their own remix site for "Nude," but there are a couple of differences. First of all, they're providing users with individualized MySpace-compatible widgets with playback and voting functionality, and offering their own ears as a prize to the highest-voted remixes. Strangest of all, however, is the means by which the multitrack stems are being delivered: you have to buy them individually from the iTunes Plus program, which means it'll cost would-be remixers a few extra bucks to get the material, and also that they're already compressed and the sound quality will take a hit as a result.

However, it's also worth noting that while access to the multitrack files was free for the singles from "With Teeth" and "Year Zero," getting them for "Ghosts I-IV" requires the purchase of the $75 special edition -- officially, at least.

Already we're bumping into these while just browsing some of the studio-centric sites -- Todor Kobakov's string quartet is one particularly cool example. Given the respective popularity of each group, there may well be an outpouring of remixes that far outpaces what Trent's efforts have prompted so far.

You're still here? Stop reading this post already, and go fire up Garageband! Or you can give us a call if you want ProTools and are feeling ambitious...

So, you thought it couldn't get any darker than Nine Inch Nails? It almost seemed like it had to be an April Fools joke, but for the fact that this hit the news wires well after the 1st: legendary serial killer Charles Manson has recorded an album called "One Mind" and released it for free online under a Creative Commons license.

Probably the weirdest thing about this, though, is Limewire touting it on their company blog.

Anyway, anybody feel like giving it a listen? Please report back to us if you do. We'll be in the studio, possibly recording something or other but mostly just trying to pretend we're not creeped out.

We all knew it was coming -- Reznor and Radiohead are now in an all-out brawl. In a manner of speaking, at least -- Wired has stacked 'em up side by side for a poll comparing their respective online releases along ten different axes ranging from "Timing" to "Smack talk." If you have strong opinions about either, head on over to cast your votes.

Christ on a pogo stick!

I knew the uber-package for Ghosts had sold out, but I didn't really put the numbers together until I saw them in an article elsewhere: 2500 copies at $300 a pop means that Trent just earned three quarters of a million dollars in one day. And remember, that's only from the high-end package. When you add in the more modestly priced sales to those of us that live in the real world, it'll be considerably higher.

My own FLAC purchase was cut off by a download error and when I emailed tech support for help, they said they'd be working all day to fix things and would get my purchase to me by tomorrow morning. The NIN online store was shut down for a good chunk of today, replaced by a message saying they were trying to bolster the server's stability and would have the store operational again soon.

Well, it's up again, but I was surprised when I saw that the $300 limited-run ultra-deluxe edition is no longer one of the purchase options. I assume this means that they've sold all 2500 copies already, which is really surprising -- with all the attention being paid to this as a low-cost digital release, the most expensive of the physical packages sold out in a single day!

He made an admirable attempt to hide it, but all winter it was pretty easy to see the steam shooting out of Trent Reznor's ears.

When Radiohead dropped In Rainbows back in October -- and that's "dropped" as in "hydrogen bomb on the industry," not merely "new album" -- Reznor was one of the most outspoken advocates. I even remember seeing an interview somewhere in which he said he put some exorbitant rock-star number into the set-your-own-price box -- several thousand dollars, I think, though I can't find the link at the moment. Still, it seemed a little forced, because it was obvious that Reznor was just annoyed to bits that he hadn't come up with the idea first.

A few weeks later, the moment he was able, he ditched his record label and promised to pursue a more direct relationship with his fans. This wasn't entirely surprising, given the antagonistic comments he had been making about his label during his Australian tour the preceding summer.

Then came the Saul Williams project which he produced, sold online with an optional payment in a slight variant of the Radiohead stunt. It seemed like his enthusiasm had been tempered somewhat when he posted a message, quite obviously frustrated, on the NIN web site detailing the sales figures for Williams' album, which he found underwhelming.

Not so, apparently. In a note posted abruptly to his web site last night, he announced the release of a new four-volume, 36-track instrumental album called Ghosts which is being distributed through an online direct-sales tactic every bit as outlandish as Radiohead's. Let's consider all the ways in which he is breaking with tradition here.

For starters, the first movement -- it seems inappropriate to call it a "disc," since Reznor doesn't refer to it as such anywhere on his site -- is available for free download as a sampler of sorts. This mirrors the In Rainbows plan quite closely: release part of it for free, and then sell the complementary part of the album through the package. Lots of people seem to have forgotten that In Rainbows was actually a double album and only disc 1 was released online. To get the other half, you had to to buy a hard copy.

Reznor is not requiring anyone to buy a physical copy in order to get volumes 2-4, but he is asking them to purchase a download. The price is a seriously lowball $5 -- remember, this is 36 tracks that comprise a good two hours of audio -- and that will even get you your choice of lossless audio formats if the lower resolution of MP3 isn't your bag. Those who want a hard copy can pick up a two-disc Digipak for $10, which is still remarkably cheap for a double album from an artist of his caliber.

Volume I, meanwhile, has been uploaded to the popular BitTorrent sites by Reznor himself in an attempt to spread what is effectively the album's promotional sampler as far across the internet as possible.

Furthermore, all the tracks are released under the Creative Commons license, which is a special sort of quasi-copyright that reserves the usual rights but then promises only the laxest enforcement in a deliberate attempt to allow certain uses such as sampling and remixing. In short, most non-commercial use is allowed.

To that end, he's also selling a $75 deluxe version, essentially his answer to Radiohead's vinyl-and-goodies Discbox package, which includes multitrack versions of all the songs. As cool and forward-thinking as you may think this is, the truth is that he has done it before, specifically with the singles from the With Teeth and Year Zero albums. Still, this time he's including all the songs, and the previous multitrack releases weren't under the Creative Commons license, so there wasn't really a whole lot to be done with them when your noodling was done. Chances are we're going to be having a lot of fun playing with these in the Monkeyclaus studio in the near future.

There's also a 24-bit, 96 kHz version of the album provided on Blu-Ray disc; if you're not an audio geek, that basically means "insanely high quality." It's certainly the first Blu-Ray audio release I've ever heard about.

The $300 super-deluxe eat-that-Radiohead version of the album comes with vinyl and additional artwork and is limited to 2500 pieces, all of which will be signed by Reznor. As with Radiohead's album, hard-copy purchases come with a free download package in the interest of immediate gratification.

It's a much grander scheme than Radiohead's -- some are even saying he went too far -- but then, he had to be overly flamboyant since he showed up late to the party, right? Gimmicks aside, though, the Creative Commons is an unexpected twist. Previously, that licensing scheme had been the domain solely of fringe anti-copyright activists; you typically don't see the artists who have sold millions of records become desperate to relinquish control of their copyrights.

So, did it work?

We'll have to see. We're only a few hours into the guerilla+kamikaze release, but I suspect this will be gobbled up by the media and regurgitated as a validation of Radiohead's instincts -- that is, irrefutable proof that music distribution has just gone through a rapid and irreversible mutation.

The NIN.com servers were utterly slammed as soon as the news hit the net, so my FLAC copy is still downloading very slowly and uncooperatively. I BitTorrented Volume I while I was waiting, though (I've never seen a torrent move so quickly -- there was a lot of enthusiasm all over the net, it seems) and to be honest I'm a little underwhelmed. Disc 1 of In Rainbows blew me away, which totally heightened the excitement of knowing I was part of something groundbreaking. Radiohead did this deliberately, too: it's pretty clear that they stacked the album's track listing in favor of the half slated for online release, and the oft-forgotten second disc is considerably weaker.

The portion of Ghosts slated for online release, however, almost sounds like Reznor was rushed, busting his ass all through November just so he'd have a new album to unveil using some creative release strategy.

Even if the rest of the album can't pick up the slack, I'll probably go easy on him. That kind of enthusiasm is worth encouraging.