From an article posted on Cnet News.com:
Talk about technology and your experience using the Web as a distribution method. Reznor: When we started the idea, we liked the clean feel of the Radiohead experience... I like the idea of feeling kind of homemade and simple. There is a beauty to the fact that everybody has got their own distribution network that is already set up. How simple and obvious to just do this. But the reality of that is building the infrastructure that has a store and accepts the right form of payment and fulfillment and all those boring kinds of things.
Are you going to abandon this or will Nine Inch Nails offer a similar promotion as Williams? Reznor: If I had a record to put out today, I would do something very similar to what we just did cause I don't think there is a better option. I would include a physical piece as I just said and all of the components I would make sure had value.
Saul said he doesn't have any regrets about the way the album was released. He credits the Internet with setting him free from having to deal with the labels. Is this how you feel? Reznor: I can't tell you how great it felt when Saul and I and his team said 'Let's do this. Let's go.'
There's not an army of people saying no for this reason. To feel in control of your own destiny for a change, that's an incredibly liberating feeling. Where it needs to be worked out and fine tuned is the right way to hopefully generate enough commerce from it to justify doing it and really working on the right way and right tone to get the word out to people that doesn't feel intrusive or old school.
But at the same time there is a little bit of an element with Saul's record of a tree falling in the woods...It hurt my feelings to see it not show up on everybody's Best Album Of The Year lists, because I think not enough people knew it was out there.