TRENT REZNOR-OMICS
Friday, January 4th, 2008 at 3:33pm by Vince Neilstein
In a recent post on his blog, Nine Inch Nails frontman/onlyman Trent Reznor revealed the sales figures of the recent Saul Williams album which he produced and then released to the public via the Radiohead “pay what you wish” model (sort of – it was either free for 192k mp3s or $5 for higher quality files). The results:
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.Of those paying,
3220 chose 192kbps MP3
19,764 chose 320kbps MP3
5338 chose FLAC
After the jump, Trent Reznor admits mild disappointment, but takes a very progressive outlook on the other benefits that may have been gleaned from the tactic. Plus, our analysis:
Keep in mind not one cent was spent on marketing this record. The only marketing was Saul and myself talking as loudly as we could to anybody that would listen.
If 33,897 people went out and bought Saul’s last record 3 years ago (when more people bought CDs) and over 150K – five times as many – sought out this new record, that’s great – right?
I have to assume the people knowing about this project must either be primarily Saul or NIN fans, as there was very little media coverage outside our direct influence. 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.
Add to that: we spent too much (correction, I spent too much) making the record utilizing an A-list team and studio, Musicane (sic) fees, an old publishing deal, sample clearance fees, paying to give the record away (bandwidth costs), and nobody’s getting rich off this project.But…
Saul’s music in in more people’s iPods than ever before and people are interested in him. He’ll be touring throughout the year and we will continue to get the word out however we can.So – if you’re an artist looking to utilize this method of distribution, make of these figures what you will and hopefully this info is enlightening.
Best,
TR
So, 18.3% paid for the record. $5 times 28,322 = $141,610. Not bad considering no money was spent on marketing, but I guess they spent that amount or more on recording costs. It stands to reason that in an age when anyone can make a pretty good sounding recording on software that comes with any Mac, that the day of big-budget producers and studios is OVER. If Reznor and Williams had done this on the cheap, they would have had themselves a nice little payout.
Is “pay what you wish” a feasible business model? Would this not have been possible if a high-profile musician hadn’t been involved? Whether or not you think so, you have to hand it to Reznor for trying something new and continuing to look to and embrace the future.
-VN
Without a doubt is an interesting idea. How ever, that “pay what you wish” idea is the same idea behind those street musicians that play on the subways, metros and buses all around the world, with a hat or a cup in front of them, waiting to be filled with little coins.
I don’t think it could have worked well if someone like TR wasn’t behind it. Like he said, he has a loyal fanbase that will support him always (the way he promoted his last record was pure genius). As today, it seems that the only way to get decent sales is to apply some middle-of-the-road politics: You need to reach the most poeple as you can and distribute your product with lesser people in between, but you also need some one who support you promoting your work and putting your album on the shelves, no matter how small they are now.
The intenet alone is not the solution to distribute music. Radiohead just recently put their latest album in stores, when theyr were giving it away in the net. It seems that they realized that their sales in merchandise and touring are not enough to pay their recording costs and make a living out of thie work. Discuss.
Interesting experiment. I would say that you seem pretty on about their overhead being too high for this new business model of “pay what you like”. There seems to be a high diminishing return rate for increased production values. Not a good ROI, especially considering that for a few hundred dollars you can make a home studio that will sound better than a million dollar studio built in the 70s or 80s. These are interesting times indeed.
[...] *Trent Reznor releases the numbers behind the In Rainbows style release of Saul Williams’ new album. [metal sucks] [...]
I think that if this was an actual NIN album, it would have been a bit different. Personally, I would have paid $10 for a new NIN album at 320kbs. As I’m not a Saul Williams fan, I deleted the free files after listening to them once.
I absolutely give Trent props for trying this. But I think this model will work best for albums between albums for big name artists. So, NIN releases a major label record. Then every few months until the next release they put together a 5 song ep or so of new songs, b-sides, outtakes, demos – something unique for the listener and collector/fan. Put a 5 song ep up from NIN and I’ll give Trent $5 for it. Prince does this a lot – he’ll release an album – then every now and again, he’ll post a new song, or new collection of songs from the vault or things he just created via some jam session. Every time one of them pops up, I’m forking over my cash for it. So I think the model can work but it might take a long time before someone figures out how to release EVERYTHING from an artist and make money off of it.
It’s an interesting method, to say the least. After all, this is the computer age. You can honestly even buy your groceries online. What a sad, lazy world.
I’m not one of these people that “live” on my computer. I like to get out into the world and go shopping and browse for hours in a book store or music store. I like the feel of a cd in my hand that I can pop into the player and not have to worry if my computer will crash again…..