On Friday, April 15th, Nine Inch Nailsi Trent Reznor gave his fans a free song, and made it a GarageBand file to boot. "The Hand That Feeds" is an advance single for Nine Inch Nailsi forthcoming album, With Teeth, which is due to be released on May 5th, 2005. The single is currently available from the iTunes Music Store for US$0.99, but the download makes the song free for Mac users who have GarageBand, a part of Appleis iLife suite.

Opening the download file requires agreeing to a license that, among other things, allows the user to use or modify any of the sounds in the song for noncommercial purposes. In addition, the license specifies that all of the sounds and recordings in the song belong to Interscope Records, the copyright holder, and are not being transferred.

In addition, accompanying the GarageBand file is a letter from Trent Reznor, that we are republishing in its entirety:

Hello all-

For quite some time Iive been interested in the idea of allowing you the ability to tinker around with my tracks - to create remixes, experiment, embellish or destroy whatis there. I tried a few years ago to do this in shockwave with very limited results.

After spending some quality time sitting in hotel rooms on a press tour, it dawned on me that the technology now exists and is already in the hands of some of you. I got to work experimenting and came up with something I think youill enjoy.

What Iim giving you in this file is the actual multi-track audio session for "the hand that feeds" in GarageBand format. This is the entire thing bounced over from the actual Pro Tools session we recorded it into. I imported and converted the tracks into AppleLoop format so the size would be reasonable and the tempo flexible.

So...

You need a Macintosh and you need GarageBand 2.0. If you have a newer Mac, you already have the software. The more RAM you have the better. I did this on a PowerBook 1.67 w/ 2G RAM but it has been running on far less powerful systems.

Drag the file over to your hard disk and double click it. Hit the space bar. Listen.

Change the tempo. Add new loops. Chop up the vocals. Turn me into a woman. Replay the guitar. Anything youid like.

I gave this to my crew and band to test out and all work effectively stopped for a while - itis fun to mess around with. Iive now heard a country version of the track as well as an abstract Latin interpretation (thanks, Leo).

There are some copyright issues involved, so read the notice that pops up. Giving this away is an experiment. Iim interested to see what comes of it, what issues are raised and what the results are.

Have fun-
Trent Reznor
April 15, 2005

You can find the GarageBand download at the Nine Inch Nails current news Web page, dated April 15th, 2005.

You can download the song in AAC format from the iTunes Music Store, where you can also find the rest of the Nine Inch Nails catalog.