THE NIN HOTLINE

So we've gotten some mail and a few tweets about this previously unreleased Pretty Hate Machine demo tape that showed up on eBay. This is not "Demos & Remixes" nor "Purest Feeling" - it has legitimate early versions of Sin and Terrible Lie.

Martin Atkins posted a Facebook note about the auction where he explains that despite putting a $20,000 price tag on it, he's not expecting to get $20,000 for the tape, it's just set up this way so they can privately review bids. They're going to be posting samples on Facebook at some point.



And now I'm going to editorialize a little bit, which maybe I shouldn't do because I'll probably come off sounding like an ass. I find it a little ironic that shortly after Trent Reznor finally got access to his first album - which in all likeliness, he'll never fully own the rights to - someone else is putting an exorbitant price tag on early music that Trent recorded and, in this case, freely gave out to people. Certainly not everyone who got copies of this tape still has it, and chances are this is one of the only remaining cassette copies out there.

I'm reminded of the way people would sell bootleg audio and video from Nine Inch Nails on eBay. Fans paid out the nose to merchants who often didn't share the profit with the original bootleggers who made the recordings, never mind the musicians who made the music. That market was happily eviscerated as the NIN fan community made a great effort to put as much of this bootleg material online for free. In many cases, this lead to bootleggers posting audio and video online themselves, and this eventually mutated into fan-organized documentary films like those found on ThisOneIsOnUs, whose quality far exceeds that of the bootlegs you used to have to shell out $30 for, and even that of many 'professional' or 'official' concert videos.

Anyway, regardless of my view on who sells what, auctions like this will continue to crop up so long as there is a market for them - and there's definitely a demand for this stuff. It's not my place to tell other people what to do with things they have in their possession, but I probably wouldn't have even added commentary to this post if the arbitrary price associated with the cassette wasn't $20,000. I hope we all get to hear what's on that tape without someone buying it for the price of a used mid-size sedan.

Morgan Hendry sent in word that Trash Audio had posted about a video posted to Soundworks Collection. In their own words:

It's 45 minutes long, and I just started listening to it, so I don't really have much to summarize, so I'll just embed it and let you have a look for yourself:

Thanks again for the news, Morgan!

We've gotten word from a number of people that they've received notification that their vinyl edition of the Social Network Soundtrack has been shipped. There had been some trouble with manufacturing, as well as some issues with email notification, but everything appears to be in order now. Thanks to atxbomber and parkman47 for the heads up!

mlirhar sent us a note on Twitter after having found the vinyl edition of the 2010 Pretty Hate Machine remaster on Amazon. Though they don't have the artwork up yet, you can check out the vinyl cover at Sleevage's interview with Rob Sheridan, which goes into detail about the amount of work that was put into reimagining the cover art:
Yeah, there's more going on there than you might have first guessed. While you're reading about album art, you should also check out Rob's notes on how he created the artwork for the Social Network soundtrack, which didn't involve Photoshop so much as it did a text editor.

Anyway, at the time of posting, the pre-order price of the vinyl is $28.48, with a release date of December 7, 2010. In the past, pre-order prices have dropped in the days leading up to the actual release, and as always with Amazon, you'll get it for whatever the lowest price is between now and the actual release.