Trent Reznor and Tom Yorke were amongst the first big artists to turn their back on the music industry as it was last decade and go rogue by selling/distributing/promoting their work by themselves, thru their own channels and for a price they would fix themselves.
Many people had hopes for a free-for-all internet where music would be immediately released by the artists themselves and people would pay for the music directly to the artists, freeing them from the "Evil Record Companies". Thing is, after a few attempts that worked well, it appears obvious that retribution thru a pay-as-you-want model doesn't work too well and for some weird reasons the fans don't want to pay all the time as much or as often as the artists would want them to. Trent Reznor saw that at his own expense when he financially backed a release by rapper Saul Williams and soon realized that only 18% of the 150.000 people who downloaded the work actually paid for it. But by the same token, Trent did release a few records directly and they did great: Ghost I-IV was very successfull as it was offered in divers formats and forms and sold about 750.000 copies in about a week and grossed around 1,6...