Thom Yorke's confused warble on the In Rainbows track "Videotape" just took on another layer of significance, and in addition, Trent Reznor has been watering the middle finger to the old record industry that is Ghosts, and now it's finally growing longer. In a recent post on his site, Trent announced a collaborative fan project centered around YouTube which will surely add an immense catalog of custom visuals to the ecosystem of remixes that's sure to spring up around the album.

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.

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