Over the weekend, users claiming to be “the official profile for NIN” began popping up on popular torrent sites. As it turns out, they weren’t lying.

After breaking with Interscope, NIN decided to take the distribution of its music into its own hands and released its latest album, Ghosts I-IV, via its official Web site.

Of course, Radiohead took a similar route with their latest album In Rainbows, which was available digitally on a suggested donation basis before it was given a proper, physical release earlier this year.

It seems more and more that labels are becoming less necessary, but keep in mind, the bands that have been able to pull stuff like this off are once that are already pretty well established. As much as we all think they rock (and they do), Radiohead and Trent Reznor are already pretty well off; there are still plenty of bands out there who need to suckle at the music industry’s teat before they can strike out on their own. At least, if they want that flashy automobile. Hybrid, of course.

The Virgin Megastores in LA and NYC will be shutting down early next year, according to Variety. Not surprising given that holiday CD sales were down 18% from last year.  Meanwhile, the folks over at Torrent site The Pirate Bay are having a banner year, doubling their traffic and getting themselves new and improved hardware to better serve up free movies and music to people smart enough to know what Torrents are and how to use them. Which isn’t me. I guess when all the music stores close I’ll be forces to figure out how to use that shit, but for now, I’ll keep buying my CDs at Tower…I mean…Virgin Megastore LA…uh, I mean…The Wherehouse….fuck!