This week, Nine Inch Nails released four new albums — Ghosts I-IV. The albums contain 36 tracks of new music. And although I never plan on listening to all 36 tracks in their entirety, I bought the album today.

Nine Inch Nail’s Ghosts I-IV is the third major digital album release, the first two being Radiohead’s In Rainbows and Saul Williams’ The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust, both released in 2007. Unfortunately, due to the relative unpopularity of those two bands, it’s been difficult to gauge whether or not digital downloads are a viable method for releasing new albums. Radiohead, a band with one radio hit, reportedly had 1.2 million downloads of In Rainbows the day it was released. Unfortunately, converting those numbers to financial income has been difficult. Radiohead allowed fans to pay “whatever they wanted” for the album (including nothing), and (to date) hasn’t released how many of those 1.2 million downloaders paid anything for the album. Saul Williams (who is on Trent Reznor/Nine Inch Nails’ record label) has been more up front with his numbers; during his album’s push, approximately 30,000 people paid $5 to download the album. That’s not bad, considering (A) my guess is, unless you work in a music store, you couldn’t find two people today who could name you a Saul Williams song and (B) his previous album sold an almost identical number of albums. As has been well documented, signed artists typically make somewhere around a dime per song for each album, so on Williams’ last album, he grossed $30k. This time around, he pocketed $150k.

But Nine Inch Nails is different; we’re not talking about a college art-rock band or a black spoken word poet here. Nine Inch Nails has won two Grammys, sold over 20 million records, and is (according to the All Music Guide) the most popular industrial band ever. This is the closest we’ve seen to a “mainstream” digital download album release so far. One would expect Nine Inch Nails to be able to draw a much larger audience, and you would be right; according to Ars Technica, during the album’s first three days, the band has grossed $750,000. That’s three quarters of a million dollars going directly into Trent Reznor’s pocket. (Trent Reznor IS Nine Inch Nails; you knew that, right?) And sure, the guy has costs involved in recording his albums — then again, the guy owns his own studio and plays all the instruments on his albums. While I’m sure hanging around the studio and recording music costs the guy “something,” it’s hard not to imagine the guy swimming around in a big pile of money a’la Scrooge McDuck right about now.

If there’s any disappointment with this release, it’s that, well, Ghosts I-IV are crap, consisting of 36 instrumental tracks — that’s right, no vocals. So far, through a random sampling of tracks, I haven’t found many I’d listen to a second time. I suppose it’s good background music for those who enjoy industrial background music; I’m not one of those people. Then again, I didn’t buy the album because I expected to like it. I bought the album because I’m supporting an ideal. I like the idea of my money going directly to an artist. I think this is the future of music. For $5 I got 36 songs, two dozen wallpapers, a bunch of web graphics, and a 40-page PDF that I looked at as long as I would have looked at a printed out copy. In an age where iTunes tracks are .99, it’s hard to say I didn’t get my money’s worth.

Again, I’m slightly disappointed that instead of delivering a real new honest-to-goodness Nine Inch Nails album, I bought a bunch of instrumental tracks. But more important than the quality of the music, I feel as if this was a test to see if the techno-literate masses are ready to move to the digital distribution of music.

We’re ready.

We’re listening.