THE NIN HOTLINE

Just a quick follow-up on Meathead's update below about the VH1 contest. Click here to launch VH1's media player and watch the winning video and the 19 other runners-up. (Firefox users: I had trouble opening the player with Firefox; you may need to use IE.) Thanks again to everyone who voted for "Closer" as the best music video of all time!

And thank god NIN didn't lose to Bon Jovi.

Joining the top 0.1% of all content on Wikipedia, the article on Nine Inch Nails has been categorized as a "Good Article", primarily due to lots of recent work put forth by Botley.

The next step is to make it a Featured Article, which would land it on the front page of the English edition of Wikipedia, but in order for this to happen, we need uncopyrighted images. If you took nice photos of the band at any point in time, please take some time and upload them to Wikimedia Commons. Wikipedia is very strict about image sourcing, and doesn't even much like the use of promotional photos. It's strange, but whatever. So if you have good original NIN photos, please upload them. Thanks and congratulations to everyone who helped work on this article!

In case you missed the hints in our update about Closure, a couple of very cool things have made their way into the wild recently. Adding to the pile, The Broken film on DVD just made its way to The Pirate Bay. If you would like to download it, you will a Bittorrent client (read more at Wikipedia), and enough space on your hard drive to hold a DVD's worth of material. (In short, the more people that are downloading the DVD at the same time, the faster the downloads should go, basically)

Numerous people on the inter-web, the first of which was our close personal friend GeoffT, have informed us that the "Closer" video has made it to the top of VH1's Greatest Music Videos Of All Time thing we mentioned earlier. There's no mention of it yet on VH1's website, but since Trent obviously needs some cheering up, I thought I'd go ahead and post the news anyway.

For all those that have slept their way through the recent NIN news (*cough*), Blabbermouth have some TR quotes about the new album:

"This is not a particularly friendly record and it certainly doesn't sound like anything else out there right now. Artists these days are not encouraged to experiment or take risks, and my punishment is on its way."

as well as some other news you probably knew already. Thanks go to Matt V and Matt G for this one.

Every year, we get a veritable torrent of emails about the Closure DVD being released on December 31st. This is a database glitch related to a merger from years ago. The Closure DVD is not being released to retailers until legal crap works itself out and the record label decides it's time to release it.

"Every Day is Exactly The Same" is the #1 Hot Dance Single (?!) on Billboard's 2006 Year-End Sales chart.

Thanks, Tony and Casbah!

Something's wrong with our RSS feed, but check out Trent's blog on nin.com -- he is finished writing and recording the new album. Further detail at nin.com.

I got an email this morning directing me to this link, where you can buy a NIN tribute CD made entirely from "baby rock" instruments. (Check out the Tool tribute too... Opiate is hilarious.) Get them kids hooked on NIN early!

*edit* Several astute readers who were actually planning to buy the Baby Rock tribute to Nine Inch Nails alerted us to the fact that the album won't be available until after Christmas. Bummer!

Last.fm is listing Trent Reznor among the artists scheduled to perform at the Monterey Park Festival in November 2007. Seems a bit far in advance, but we'll let you know if we get any official confirmation. Thanks to Caustic for writing in.

nin.com has updated with comprehensive info about the upcoming live DVD release, Beside You In Time, now scheduled for a U.S. release date of February 27, 2007. Click here for the info, including the track listing.

Holy shit.

Every Day is Exactly the Same has been nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance -- you can find out more from the official Grammys website. Thanks to metronome, Terryana, Keara, DC, Yves and Frank for the news.

Wordsmith and musician Saul Williams has toured with Nine Inch Nails in Europe and America, and Trent Reznor had a hand in producing his upcoming album. This prompted the MTV division of Simon & Schuster to ask if we'd do a contest to promote Saul's most recent book, The Dead Emcee Scrolls: The Lost Teachings of Hip-Hop. So I drew up a survey about a month ago, and forgot to do anything about it until last night. Go here and fill out this innocent questionnaire before the end of next week, and we'll draw fifteen winners at random from the entries to receive a copy of the Saul Williams book, straight from the publisher.

With permission, we'll be reposting select portions of newsworthy blog updates from the Spiral. You should still sign up for a membership if you haven't already -- not only for the scintillating chat sessions and fascinating threads where Spiral members post pictures of various naked body parts, but Trent has been posting lots of cool shit on his blog, like pictures of his new studio and the fact that almost all the new songs are finished.

Anyway, recently Rob Sheridan posted a couple of updates about the new DVD, Beside You In Time. Among other things, Rob says: "Personally I consider the high-def versions of this release to be the definitive versions, since the project revolved around the idea of doing it all in HD. But even so, the standard DVD is really nice, and looks awesome on a standard-definition TV." Also, good news for those who'll be buying the standard DVD: "we were able to get Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1, and DTS 5.1 audio on the standard DVD, and they all sound great." Finally, Rob also says the packaging will be different for the three different formats due to the current industry standards for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD packaging. Again, check in with the Spiral for the most up-to-date information about the DVD, the new NIN record, and for a lot more exclusive content. Thanks to those of you who wrote in about Rob's updates.

Finally, Shawn Faherty wrote in on the topic of the DVD with news that the current issue of the digital technology magazine, POST, "has an article called DVD Evolution by Christine Bunish. She talks with San Francisco's MX Entertainment company about NIN's new triple release - Blu-ray, HD DVD and SD - for Beside You in Time out early next year. Creative Director Ole Lutjens says. 'Some Labels and bands have found that an across-the-boards release is a smart move if you can afford it,' also 'Nine Inch Nails has a really great art director who's particular about presenting the look and feel of the band and who wants to match the design across all formats. It's exciting to see that working.'"

Buddyhead has a funny interview by Aaron North with Jesse Hughes of one of my favorite bands, Eagles of Death Metal. This is barely NIN-related but I'm on a roll, so why not. Thanks to raid and Rob.

Many, many, many people have written in to let us know that Trent has won Peta's "Best New Fur Foe" award. Check it out.

I'm sure this will leave our readers scratching their heads as to whether this is true or just a mocking reference to the unfairly panned Bill Cosby action film Leonard Part 6, but my own local paper AMNY recently interviewed CX Kidtronik and his collaboration with Trent on a sequel to Mr. Self Destruct came up. You can check the interview out here, although I must say, I thought mine was way better. Thanks to Monica for the info.

Two readers, unknown parts and Aladdin Sane, sent us this real estate listing. Figured we'd post it for anybody who's got 1.3 million to shell out and wants to own a piece of NIN history.