Radiohead vs. NIN: User-Gen Battle Royale

It looks to be an all-out skirmish between Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor and Radiohead over who really took the digital plunge first. Trent's argument is that Radiohead offered fans a poor quality stream of their latest release, In Rainbows, before reverting to a standard record-release model, while claiming that he truly broke rank with his new four-volume (!) instrumental work, Ghosts I-IV, available as a $5 stream, a $10 double CD, a $75 set with bonus visual content and, for the superfan, a $300 box set including vinyl and the NIN frontman's John Hancock. (Radiohead has remained characteristically mum about the whole thing.)

And now, "coincidentally," both bands are offering fans the opportunity to create videos for their music. Radiohead is offering $20,000 in prizes (actually a grand prize of $10,000 and $1,000 for 10 semi-finalists to be used towards the creation of their final clips) and Trent is offering, well, exposure on YouTube.