well trent has known for a while how he can market to the "internet community". everything he did with 42 entertainment leading up to year zero's release, now this release on the pirate bay, i think he's really banking on the power of forming a strong internet social group.
and, i think, for a long time he has owned his own studio and done most of all his release spoon since getting buttraped by TVT records. and since he pulled himself away from heroin.

i personally really like year zero. theres much less of what made me love NIN when i first got into it around the Downward Spiral (that heartful pain i identified with back when i was 13) and more of a sense of him just having fun with it, which i get into more nowadays anyways.