“Nine Inch Nails presents Ghosts I - IV, a brand new 36 track instrumental collection available right now. Almost two hours of new music composed and recorded over an intense ten week period last fall, Ghosts I - IV sprawls Nine Inch Nails across a variety of new terrain.”

Trent Reznor explains, “I’ve been considering and wanting to make this kind of record for years, but by its very nature it wouldn’t have made sense until this point. This collection of music is the result of working from a very visual perspective - dressing imagined locations and scenarios with sound and texture; a soundtrack for daydreams. I’m very pleased with the result and the ability to present it directly to you without interference. I hope you enjoy the first four volumes of Ghosts.”

Ghosts I-IV - Track 1
Ghosts I-IV - Track 2
Ghosts I-IV - Track 3

Via BrushFireRecords.com: “Check out the official music video for Jack Johnson’s new single “If I Had Eyes” from the February 5th Brushfire Records’ release “Sleep Through The Static.” The video is directed by The Malloys. It is the featured video on the home page of BrushfireRecords.com.”

Click here to watch the video or head over to brushfirerecords.com for more info on the new Jack Johnson record.

Also, Death Cab’s Chris Walla has a new solo album out that is definitely worth having a listen. “Field Manual” is available in stores as of yesterday, or for your listening pleasure at mtvu.com.

Chris Walla “Everybody On”

Via NadaSurf.com:
“You can’t buy Nada Surf’s new album “Lucky” until early February, but starting Friday, January 25th fans, friends and frenemies (??) can stream the entire record on the band’s myspace page: myspace.com/nadasurf Tell your friends, and don’t forget to let us know what you think.”

“Something we’ve wanted for years—for people who visit Last.fm to be able to play any track for free—is now possible. With the support of the folks behind EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner—and the artists they work with—plus thousands of independent artists and labels, we’ve made the biggest legal collection of music available to play online for free, the way we believe it should be.

Full-length tracks are now available in the US, UK, and Germany, and we’re hard at work broadening our coverage into other countries. During this initial public beta period, each track can be played up to 3 times for free before a notice appears telling you about our upcoming subscription service. The soon-to-be announced subscription service will give you unlimited plays and some other useful things. We’re also working on bringing full-length tracks to the desktop client and beyond.

Free full-length tracks are obviously great news for listeners, but also great for artists and labels, who get paid every time someone streams a song. Music on Last.fm is perpetually monetized. This is good because artists get paid based on how popular a song is with their fans, instead of a fixed amount.

We will be paying artists directly.

We already have licenses with the various royalty collection societies, but now unsigned artists can put their music on Last.fm and be paid directly for every song played. This helps to level the playing-field—now you can make music, upload it to Last.fm and earn money for each play. If you make music, you can sign up to participate for free.

We’re not printing money to pay for this—but the business model is simple enough: we are paying artists and labels a share of advertising revenue from the website.

Today we’re redesigning the music economy. There are already millions of tracks available, and we’re adding more every day. We will continue to work hard to bring this to everyone in the world.”

Maybe I’ve been living under a rock, because I have never heard of the “Black Cab Sessions” before today. But when I got word that The Kooks jammed a new song freestyle in the back of a cab I had to give it a look.

“A challenge has been laid down. Forget chart positions, forget ticket sales, or brand-extending toiletries or myspace friends or any other measure of success. From here on in, it’s all about how well you can rock in the back of a cab.”

“The Sessions are all about great music and the venue strips this to its essence. We aren’t picky about genre and will happily open the cab door to anyone who blows us away”

Click here to see Black Cab Sessions Chapter Twenty-Five featuring The Kooks, and head over to blackcabsessions.com for more great bands performing unplugged in the back of some random taxi cab.

He told Q: “I think the songs on ‘Around The Sun’ are great, but in the process of recording we lost our focus as a band. Now, that focus is back. And it’s razor sharp.”

For more R.E.M. goodness you should also head over to Ninety Nights which will be streaming a new 30-60 second short video for… well… ninety nights leading up to the release of “Accelerate”. The video’s are a bit off the wall right now, but my hunch is that it will all make sense by April 1st. Each video can also be downloaded in HD for the duration of the day in which it was released.

Once registered, there is a point system that comes into play as well which makes things even more interesting. You use points to vote for songs you like, but if that songs gets popular, you make even more points. Listen to music on “The Rack” (tracks that haven’t made it to the front page) and you earn free points as well. The more points you have, the more you can interact with the site. Earning points also gives you a higher user rating.

You will find a bit of everything (music wise) on TheSixtyOne.com from alternative to hip-hop which makes the site addicting to simply browse, listen and rate music you have never heard before. If you don’t know what to listen to, just click “The Radio” for a random mix music. This site is the definition of “social music” and the potential for TheSixtyOne.com to go BIG is very real. Check it out for yourself here.

Their latest press release explains that the new album “explores new sonic terrain with a lush, grandiose collection that includes string arrangements by world renowned composer David Campbell that makes up for a record that demonstrates a devotion to artistic growth, blending classical sensibility with their rock and roll roots.”

Click here to download “Guilt by Association” or hit the play button below to preview the new track.

Guilt By Association

Songza is also an interface showcase. I’ve used the interface principles discussed here on the Humanized blog to design Songza to be humane, slick, and viral. Play with the interface for a bit, and you’ll find habituatable pie-menus instead of slow linear menus; an inviting design that uses only two icons, both of which act as illustrations for words; an incredibly high density of content and a correspondingly low amount of interaction; undo instead of warnings; and transparent messages that don’t break your train of thought.

Ironically, there’s a lot that went into making Songza so simply. Achieving such a high level of simplification required a lot of code, in part because we couldn’t just use standard widgets. It was worth it, though. You can’t be better without being different — I think Songza is both.”

JayZ “Blue Magic”

On the official “Album Six” website, you will also find the release date for another album simply titled “Alone”: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo,’ which is due out on December 18th. Rivers says “This is a CD of my favorite home demos from ’92 to ’07 featuring a lot of never heard before songs, a few covers, a few songs from my unfinished rock musical “Songs From The Black Hole” and my original demo for “Buddy Holly””.

Publishers are finally starting to realize that they need to embrace this so called “digital age” instead of fighting it. The idea of providing a magazine in digital format is not a new concept by any means, and it amazes me that publications such as Rolling Stone have taken this long to make the leap. Seriously… companies such as Zinio.com have provided a digital solution for magazine distribution and consumption since 2001, but only with mild success. The problem is, in my opinion, that everyone including publishers and digital distributors such as Zinio are still so wrapped up with the “DRM” concept that they can’t come up with a business model that works well for everyone.

Anyway, the news here is that Rolling Stone is in fact providing their entire magazine, digital, and free of charge at RollingStone.com (sponsored by LG). This is a small step forward in the right direction, but the method in which they have implemented it “SUCKS” in a big way for the reader. RS has chosen to distribute their mag using a very clunky 1990’s style flash based reader. There is so much zooming and panning involved that it’s hard to stick with it for more than a few pages.

Either way, I give kudos to Rolling Stone for jumping on the bandwagon, but the end result needs major improvement. Plus, with popularity of web enabled, wide screen mobile devices increasing substantially, this effort might just be “too little too late”. It is apparently clear that consumers want all their digital content to be mobile and available on one single device. I think it’s only a matter of time that you will be able to get full blown magazines right on your iPod directly from programs such as iTunes.

Duran Duran “Falling Down”

“Sony ATV is aggressively moving to create new digital revenue streams for our song writers,” said Martin N. Bandier, chairman and CEO, Sony ATV Music Publishing. “SpiralFrog has created a new opportunity to monetize an untapped market by offering a compelling alternative to illicit file sharing sites.”

But as more bands realize the potential to monetize and make a profit without the need of a major label, it seems that SpiralFrog’s distribution model might be “too little too late”. Radiohead has already made more than 10 mill in donations for their latest album “In Rainbows” released “label free” only a few weeks ago. If Radiohead were still signed, about 9 million of that profit would go directly to their label just to put things in perspective. Either way, SpiralFrog.com should be recognized for thinking out of the box and providing a DRM free solution to music distribution.

Nada Surf “See THese Bones”

Band Of Horses “IsThereAGhost”