A sign of things to come? Nine Inch Nails, the rock band fronted by Trent Reznor, has released the digital loop files [70MB] for its latest single, in a format for the Apple music editing app GarageBand. Reznor is encouraging fans to remix, re-edit, and play with the sound files, making their own versions of the song.

Powerful, inexpensive tools for creating and editing audio and video are increasingly in the hands of everyday people. Sometimes that means opportunities for entirely new creations; often, it means opportunities to play with existing cultural artifacts, making them new all over again. Remixes can be better than the originals. It will be interesting to see how successful Reznor's experiment turns out to be.

(Via Metafilter)