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...

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.

We have to reproduce it here because it appears he has his site configured to swallow old posts entirely and never display them again:

Hello-

First of all, a sincere THANK YOU for the response to Ghosts. We are all amazed at the reaction for what we assumed would be a quiet curiosity in the NIN catalog. My faith in all of you has been restored - let's all go have coffee somewhere (my treat)!

Today we announce the expansion of the Ghosts project into the visual world. This record began as an experiment with us using sound as a means to describe visuals. Early in the project we thought it would be interesting to see what the community could create / collaborate on as a reaction to the music we were making. We wanted to keep the canvas as blank as possible for you, hence the lack of descriptive song titles and the primarily textural artwork and packaging.

So here's the plan: we've teamed up with YouTube to host a "film festival" around Ghosts. The concept is for you to take whatever tracks you feel inspired by from Ghosts and create what you feel should accompany them visually. You will be able to see all of the submissions, and a team of us (including me) will be sorting through them and setting aside ones we feel are exceptional. Eventually (within a couple of months?) we will present a virtual "film festival" with me and some special guests presenting selections of your work.

This isn't a contest and you don't win elaborate prizes - it's meant to be an experiment in collaboration and a chance for us to interact beyond the typical one-way artist-to-fan relationship. We've discussed some interesting ways this could go, including multiple installments of the online "film festivals," to broadcast TV specials, to a one-time live performance of the entire Ghosts record with your visuals involved. It really depends on how this progresses and develops.

We are all very much looking forward to what you come up with, and hope you enjoy the experience. Visit our YouTube channel for information on how to participate.

TR

Then, a few days later, Radiohead announced a similar contest.

Beyond the fact that Radiohead's is expressly framed as a competitive event while Reznor's seems to be intended more as a celebration of fan enthusiasm, one key difference between the two is that Radiohead's is sponsored by online cartoon portal Aniboom, and thus all submissions will be animated. While that's a notoriously difficult medium in many ways and this is not for the faint of heart, the winner will get a $10,000 budget and the official Radiohead stamp of approval for the final version of their submission.

Then again, I've seen teenagers do some remarkable work in Flash, so in another sense this stipulation opens the contest up to fans who don't have access to serious video production tools.

Regardless, anybody who remembers their 1997 video for Paranoid Android has already seen how this might turn out.

All the reports are teeming with the names of other artists who can legitimately claim to have done this before either Trent or Thom, but I think the key difference is the environment created by the preceding record release. Using the internet to connect with fans is nothing new, but everything changes when you frame it as a dramatic break from the status quo as both these bands have.

The best part about this, however, is that it's starting to seem like each wants to outdo the other, and that can only lead to more cool developments in the near future. In a best-case scenario, Reznor's recent comments about Radiohead's In Rainbows scheme can be described as a friendly sparring match. He called their offering "insincere" on the grounds that the files were gross, low-quality 160kbps and the download option was removed entirely once the traditional physical release hit stores. In a worst-case scenario, he's seriously annoyed with them and is itching to deliver the equivalent of a knockout punch. Either way, he's right to call them out on that -- In Rainbows was a landmark release, but Trent beat the pants off those British brats when it comes to things like the integrity of the files, embedded artwork, and digital extras.

What's more, hopefully the bickering will inspire more musicians to move their operations online and join in the fun. The Rolling Stones are reportedly in a position to take their masters with them when their contract with EMI expires, for example. And to strike up the classic dichotomy one more time, remember that the Beatles still aren't available on iTunes.

Both groups are undeniably rooted in the old school way of doing things, but you know they're at least paying attention -- all this is just getting too cool to ignore, even if you're Keef or Ringo.

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.