Back when Trent Reznor was still signed to Universal Music, he tested out his own form of a promotional campaign for his latest album: He started hiding USB keys with songs off of the album in the bathroom at his various concerts. Fans would find the USB keys, bring them home and upload the songs–making it into a huge event, generating much more interest around the album. Now that he’s independent and testing out all sorts of interesting business model experiments, he’s also doing plenty to connect directly to his biggest fans.

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There’s a great interview with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails up at CNET, in which he talks about his experience with the Saul Williams album he recently released as a “pay what you want” download. … I say it’s a great interview, and it is–but Trent also says something that I think is pretty dumb: he says that he’s in favor of an Internet tax, in which everyone would pay their service provider $5 extra and that money would then be distributed to artists to compensate them for downloading.

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