Sales Figures Do Not Tell the Future

Spotted on: CNET
Trent Reznor released sales numbers for the new Saul Williams release on his blog. The album “The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust” was produced and released by the Nine Inch Nails mastermind with a forward thinking model: Download the album for free, or pay $5 for a higher quality MP3 version (a la Radiohead). According to the numbers released, approximately 18% of the downloads were sales.

This number is likely slightly lower than reality. There is no information to measure how many people downloaded the album for free then went back and bought it. CNET interviewed both Trent Reznor and Saul Williams, and their opinions are quite different.

The album has been out for two months, and the major campaign of videos and touring begins in the next few weeks. The album sold almost 30,000 downloads and gave away another 120,000 with almost no marketing campaign, and no publicist. Although the album hasn’t gone digitally platinum, this experiment is a positive sign. Williams’ music does not neatly fit into a pigeonhole. While the sales model is similar to Radiohead’s In Rainbows (which is no longer available as a free download), these two artists are not in the same position, and the IRLNT test will be a gauge of what mid level artist can expect from this model, at least for this year.
Having 20% of your listeners buy your album may not seem like a large amount, but it’s hard to measure who they are, how they know Saul Williams, and whether they were pre-existing fans or not. Consider that an album’s life span is long – upwards of two years, and over the next eight to ten months we will see how this model works when promotions are put into play.
Bottom Line: Whether or not this model of selling albums works is still unclear. As time passes, and more artists try this model, we will see whether audiences will pay for something they can get for free.