Wow! This story has been around since donations started for Eric De La Cruz, a Nine Inch Nails fan who has been denied a heart transplant because of the lack of transplant centers in Nevada, but I don't think that anyone expected the campaign to be so successful. At this moment, over $850,000 has been raised, and I don't doubt that the total amount of money raised will reach one million very soon.

The campaign has been endorsed by Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction, who've set up a site for donations to help De La Cruz, and raise awareness about the lack of transplant centers in certain parts of the US.

Fans that donate money for this cause get various perks in return: a $300 donation will get you access to the soundcheck, plus a meeting with a band, $1000 dollars will get you a backstage pass and a dinner with the band, plus a special on-stage spot on the show, and $1200 donation will get you two tickets and a VIP pass.

Unfortunately, the reponse has been so overwhelming that the band stopped giving aways VIP packages for the North American NIN/JA shows; however, bigger donations will get other perks, such as a signed Tony Hawk skateboard plus a Trent Reznor signed Nine Inch Nails rarest CD release, STILL.

This is in line with Nine Inch Nails' business model of adding as much value as possible to their music, only this time the proceeds are directed towards a charity goal. Once again, NiN prove that fans are very willing to give money (even significant amounts of money) for CDs or digital downloads, if they come with added value that seems fair to them.

The music industry, on the other hand, has been doing exactly the opposite for years: instead of trying to give more to the fans, they've tried to exploit every aspect of the music - studio recordings, live recordings, posters, lyrics, tabs, concert tickets, VIP passes - separately, and earn as much as possible from each. When the Internet made it easy to share digital copies of music, they even tried to decrease value by introducing DRM to digital copies, which is now a scorned and widely abandoned tactic. No wonder they're now complaining about how Internet is bad for the industry.

Very important part of this story was Trent Reznor's Twitter account, which he used vigorously to draw attention to this cause. Together with his 571,839 motivated followers, many of whom also tweeted and retweeted about this campaign, they've shown how powerful a tool Twitter can be.