demonstrated economics of free music / niggy tardust

I was more than slightly excited when Trent Reznor decided record labels were an embarrassment, and he would go it alone. I was excited when he produced spoken work artist, poet, and hip hop artist Saul William's latest record, and decided that it would be put out in either a free 192kpbs version, or 5 dollar you call it. The results (for the moment) are here.

Trent was displeased with the results, and that's fair. Only 20% of those who downloaded the record paid, which isn't impressive or shocking.

At the same time, I have to wonder what the comparison in net profit is when compared with a the last album, released in 2004, that sold around 34,000 copies. With no label to pay, no packaging costs, I'd assume a hell of a lot more of that 5 dollars stuck around. At the same time (and you'd know this if you were reading the links) the production was expensive, with "an A-list team and studio, Musicane fees, an old publishing deal, sample clearance fees, paying to give the record away (bandwidth costs), and nobody's getting rich off this project."

I guess I'm thinking that no one was getting rich, or even comfortable off the last project, and now more people are listening, more people have the chance to become fans, and as mentioned, more people will come out to shows.

But my real question is this - is the failure we're seeing for audiences to respond to reasonable (arugably more than reasonable) pricing and conditions because people are unreasonable, or because after several years of having ethical justification for resorting to piracy, it's become enough of a habit that we don't have apologists anymore?

The Saul Williams record discussed above, 'The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust', is excellent, and really makes me hope for a future in which Reznor will produce further hip hop albums. It's good enough that I'd go see him in/when he plays in my area, and that I would consider purchasing merch, or a physical version of the album. It was my first experience with Saul Williams' work outside of books of his poetry. I downloaded the free version, and, to be honest, have no problems with that.