Nine Inch Nailed

My generation holds little nostalgia for the dwindling number of "brick and mortar" music stores whose principal purpose, back in the day, was to mark up prices and never seem to have the title you were looking for on hand. Listening, browsing and buying at a discount from huge online inventories suits us fine. We're also in favor of the most talented artists releasing anything they want directly to us via the Internet, all without having to suffer the second-guessing or interference of marketing executives.

So when a musician such as Trent Reznor, the leader of Nine Inch Nails, announced Sunday night that he was cutting out the corporate middle man and releasing nearly two hours of radio-unfriendly instrumental music through his own Web site for a low, low price, I clicked on the "purchase" button without a second thought. Actually, there was a second thought: "Awesome."

Several hours later I was frustrated and disappointed. Not because the music contained on "Ghosts I-IV" was subpar but because I had yet to hear anything at all. Hours after the payment showed up on my credit card's Web site, I was one of thousands sending fruitless e-mails to the musician's overwhelmed customer service team. When a bank is giving you faster online service than the merchant you're trying to pay, you know you're in trouble.

The morning after the music was made (allegedly) available, Reznor posted the following note on his Web site's front page: "The response to this album has been overwhelming, causing our website to slow to a crawl. We THOUGHT we were ready, but … We've been adding more servers to accommodate the unexpected demand and we expect to be running smoothly in the next few hours …"

Fair enough. You can't blame the man for being more popular than he expected. But later that night this message appeared on the band's front page: "YES, WE F***ED UP! We thought we bought enough beer but too many of you showed up for the party. We are fixing the Ghosts site right now, I am told it will be back up 100% in a few hours. In the meantime, you can buy the whole new record at Amazon if you are in the U.S. … We are sorry for the trouble (but you know it's worth it!)"

What he was saying was: sorry if you ordered the album already and still have nothing to show for it, but the good news is that you can go buy it again somewhere else! So I clicked over to Amazon.com and bought the MP3 version of Nine Inch Nails's "Ghosts" for the second time in a day. It was sort of like seeing your candy bar dangle on the last hook of a vending machine spiral and then paying again in order to get two—except buying another set of digital files does not double your overall intake of sweetness. But five minutes after paying through Amazon's MP3 service, I was at least listening to some music.