Some of you might remember the
release of Saul Williams’ latest album,
The Inevitable Rise And Liberation of NiggyTardust, a couple of months ago.
Sales of the album were patterned after Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want model for their release of
In Rainbows. Now that the intarweb has had ample time to consume the album, Trent Reznor has made sales figures
public:
Saul’s previous record was released in 2004 and has sold 33,897 copies.
As of 1/2/08,
154,449 people chose to download Saul’s new record.
28,322 of those people chose to pay $5 for it, meaning:
18.3% chose to pay.
As expected, a minority of people actually paid for the album, despite being offered higher quality file formats for the songs as an incentive. How does Trent feel about this?
If that assumption is correct – that most of the people that chose to download Saul’s record came from his or my own fan-base – is it good news that less than one in five feel it was worth $5? I’m not sure what I was expecting but that percentage – primarily from fans – seems disheartening.
He then goes on to lament over how he spent too much on producing the album and that it was a project that “nobody’s getting rich off [of]”. However, Trent’s assuming a lot about who’s buying the record. In exactly two months, the new record has moved almost as many “units” as Saul’s last album. That’s a pretty decent amount, in my opinion. Not to mention, over 5 times as many people have been exposed to the album. Granted, the last album could have had more exposure due to file trading/sharing and such, but at least now Saul has hard numbers as to what his audience reach is. Reznor’s disappointment is no undoubtedly exacerbated by the fact that he spent a lot of money producing and distributing the record. Despite this, though, I feel this is one of the best sales models for a developing artist to adopt. I would imagine lots of baby bands aren’t going to be spending the fortune that Reznor did to produce their albums. It’s also a painless, non-insulting way for artists and fans to distribute and consume new music. It provides a method of monetary compensation to the artist that may not have existed under the previous CD-only model. Perhaps some more incentive could be given to the fans who like the music enough that they want to support it. Maybe this could be a concert ticket discount, a piece of merch, or some kind of badge of honor.
It may not be the perfect solution to the music distribution problem, but it’s certainly a good start. If more artists adopt this model, it definitely opens the door for bandwidth/backend solution providers to get in on the act. Eventually, the benefits of economies of scale can be reaped, further making it easier for anyone to cheaply distribute their music to the world.
Kudos to Trent and Saul for actively trying to make headway on revolutionizing the business model of music. Keep your chin up, dawg! You did good, Trent. You did good.
NiggyTardust Followup [nin.com]
