Recently Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails released a song from his latest album as a free downlooad in the Apple GarageBand file format. This has allowed anyone with that program (I believe it comes as a standard install on recent Macs) to easily remix, rework and generally play around with the song as though they were in his recording studio. The vocals, drums, guitars etc are discrete tracks which may be arranged with new or existing sounds, sped up or slowed down etc.
This is not the first time an artist on a major record label has made it easy for listeners to remix on of their tracks (for example Jay-Z released an a cappella version of his Black Album which famously led to a mix with The Beatles’ White Album by DJ Dangermouse to create The Grey Album), but it is notable for the fact that it includes the contents of the complete original ProTools session in a format which is both highly accessible and highly malleable. The user, in a kind of collaboration with the band (and one could argue with GarageBand and its developers) may produce an endless series of ‘versions’ of the song. The song itself shifts from being a set text which may be read or played, to a cybertext which may be read from, or played with.
via Boing Boing: NIN’s Trent Reznor releases song as GarageBand file