Meanwhile…..
Radiohead, although trying all kinds of online experiments including their own social network and a remix contest fetching over 2200 remixes [one of the highest voted remixes is Holy Fuck - 3/4s of whom hail from the east coast which is nice to see considering the recognition they are getting of late].

However, they are not the innovative leaders they may have appeared to be:

“I think it was a one-off response to a particular situation. It was one of those things where we were in the position of everyone asking us what we were going to do. I don’t think it would have the same significance now anyway, if we chose to give something away again. It was a moment in time.”

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke: Free Album Offer Was a “One-Off” - Digital Media Wire
Thom Yorke: no more free Radiohead albums - Guardian UK

TechDirt’s Mike Masnick has his own take on it in “Don’t Read Too Much Into Radiohead’s Claim That It Won’t Offer Music For Free Again“:

Radiohead is making some noise again today, with lead singer Thom Yorke basically saying that the band won’t do a promotion giving away free music again…..As such, it’s not at all surprising that Yorke would say the band won’t do it again. Since they only viewed it as a stunt, repeating the stunt doesn’t make sense. They’ll come up with some other stunt for the next release. That doesn’t, however, mean that the idea was wrong or a failure. Just that the band wants its publicity stunts to be new and different each time.

Reznor expressed his less than favorable opinions on Radiohead’s release:

“I think the way [Radiohead] parlayed it into a marketing gimmick has certainly been shrewd,” Reznor said. “But if you look at what they did, it was very much a bait and switch, to get you to pay for a MySpace quality stream as a way to promote a very traditional record sale.”

Trent Reznor: Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’ promotion was ‘insincere’ - CNet News

From the same CNet article above:
The truth is that Reznor, who at times is volatile–and is always outspoken–is doing more for music fans and fellow musicians than anybody.

Continue reading for complete details on “The Slip”

The Slip, also known as Halo 27, is the seventh studio album by Nine Inch Nails and was released on May 5, 2008 via digital download. Before the release, a single, “Discipline” was released freely on the official Nine Inch Nails site, and another song, “Echoplex”, was released for free download from iLike. The ID3 tags of these MP3 files indicated that visitors should visit the Nine Inch Nails website on May 5, 2008, where a free direct download link to the album in MP3 format, as well as torrents for lossless audio formats were posted. A message posted on the Nine Inch Nails website read:

“thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years - this one’s on me”
Release

The Slip was released online on May 5, 2008 on the official Nine Inch Nails website, without any prior advertisement or notice. Like the previous Nine Inch Nails studio album Ghosts I-IV, The Slip is licensed under a Creative Commons attribution-noncommercial share alike license, in effect allowing anyone to use or rework the material for any non-commercial purpose, as long as credit is provided and the resulting work is released under an identical license. The website further expands

“we encourage you to remix it, share it with your friends, post it on your blog, play it on your podcast, give it to strangers, etc.[1]”

According to NIN.com, physical copies of the record will be released to stores around July 2008.[2] As with Ghosts I-IV and Year Zero, multi-track audio source files of the album were also made available at remix.nin.com.

Track listing

1. “999,999″ 1:25
2. “1,000,000″ 3:56
3. “Letting You” 3:49
4. “Discipline” 4:19
5. “Echoplex” 4:45
6. “Head Down” 4:55
7. “Lights in the Sky” 3:28
8. “Corona Radiata” 7:33
9. “The Four of Us Are Dying” 4:37
10. “Demon Seed” 4:59