Very cool update on the CC licensed CD from Nine Inch Nails on the CC Blog.

Creative Commons Blog

NIN's CC-Licensed Best-Selling MP3 Album

Fred Benenson, January 5th, 2009

NIN's Creative Commons licensed Ghosts I-IV has been making lots of headlines these days.

First, there's the critical acclaim and two Grammy nominations, which testify to the work's strength as a musical piece. But what has got us really excited is how well the album has done with music fans. Aside from generating over $1.6 million in revenue for NIN in its first week, and hitting #1 on Billboard's Electronic charts, Last.fm has the album ranked as the 4th-most-listened to album of the year, with over 5,222,525 scrobbles.

Even more exciting, however, is that Ghosts I-IV is ranked the best selling MP3 album of 2008 on Amazon's MP3 store.

Take a moment and think about that.

As of December 30, 2008, I am a legal resident of Dubai, UAE.

When Della Van Heyst invited me to a conference in Bahrain in 2007, I decided to go because I had never really been to the Middle East and realized that I needed to understand the region better if I one of my goals was to be a global citizen. The meeting was interesting and only reinforced my view that I was completely ignorant about the Middle East and Muslim culture. After Bahrain, Jay took me to Dubai where he was about to relocate to and introduced me to some people including his friend Balall.

Photo by Joi Ito, Design by Matsuichi

While 2008 was a tough year for everyone, it was full of surprises and interesting connections. The most interesting connection was that Mizuka and I finally got married after living together for ten years. (See joi.ito.com/weblog/2008/12/03/we-got-married.html )

In 2008, I began to explore the Middle East and decided that complete immersion was the only way to do it right. This New Year's card is being sent from Dubai where I will be moving my residence and base from 2009.

I am really looking forward to an exciting and "changeful" 2009 with all of you and hope to continue my journey to find happiness for myself and you, my increasingly global community of friends.

Longer post about Dubai later...