While Trent Reznor frets over the 18 odd percentile range that have chosen to pay the token sum of $5 for Saul Williams’ album The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust, I am more concerned by Rezzo’s so called disheartenment. From www.nin.com Reznor writes:

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.

As Rezzo anguishes over his future, free from the shackles of Evil Entertainment Moguls and how best to make a buck from his art, the numbers on Saul’s effort seem to add up, to put it into perspective his last CD to date has sold 33000 copies and paid downloads from his new album equate to similar figures. 28322 paid for the download: 28322*5 = $141610 . It sounds like an ok effort to me.

150 thousand have downloaded the album and to be fair the return rate isn’t that crash hot but the figures could be a little skewed. Presumably the largest fan base would have come from Trent’s own and may have distorted the downloads by NIN fans just downloading the free version out of interest (like I did) and once sampling the sound have not been in favour of paying. Although the music isn’t entirely to my taste it was worth the asking price, if only to support the cause, essentially why I decided to contribute my 5 bucks. Surely Rezzo can see the bias in the numbers and for initial experimentation it has to be seen as a semi success. What if the numbers grew? What if 1 million downloads occurred? 0.18*1000000*5 = $900000

If the quest is to impede or put an end to piracy then it WILL fail. What if 18 percent is the be all and end all of mass produced music? Will 18 percent be cast in stone as a unmovable mass? Can it be shifted allowing it to roll and gain momentum? So far it has potential energy and if singular entities and individuals cannot budge the moral compass then perhaps groups of artists can. What if they aligned themselves and teamed up as a force. Without an industry to back their marketing needs, new models and alliances will perhaps need to emerge. There is positively endless possibilities when untied and free to create. What people spend their dollars on is what they see offers them value, tapping into that value is where the battle will be won and fought.