Idolator

He really shouldn't have had any expections, and shouldn't feel any disappointment. It was an experiment. Bottom line: it has already sold as much as SW's last album (and will probably outsell it), and since there's no label taking most of the profit the artist will easily make more off it, even with the lower pricetag. Plus several times more people have heard it than probably would have otherwise. It's win-win the way I see it.

I'm not sure anybody take his tone of disappointment completely at face value. Even if he thought the outcome was predictable, he's sort of obligated to at least appear pissed-off--to do otherwise would be an implicit sanction of freeloadering.

Hey Jess,

This post seems a bit misleading. Trent does end his post with a positive note, that Saul's music is in more iPods than ever.

Also, looking at the 33k number: was that all sales since 2004? If so, Niggy Tardust is an exponential leap ahead of the last album.

yeah i was going to make a note after al's first comment that reznor does end his blog entry with on a "chin up" note; as for the 33k number, good question. based on that "tone of disappointment" i took it to mean initial sales, but it very well could be all sales since 2004.

I'm not seeing why he's disappointed here. The sales have been in line with Saul's last album, and there were 150k people curious enough to give it a shot. Maybe some of those people will come out to shows, blah, blah, blah.

I'd say the experiment was a with-qualifiers success.

I don't feel bad one bit. I downloaded the album, heard about 3 songs and thought it was utter shit and deleted it from my iTunes. I'm sure many people felt the same way. (Not my cup of tea)

It'd be one thing if the record was showing up on iLike and Last.FM as being one of the most played records, but it's not, so therefore, any money earned should be looked at as an accomplishment.

I paid the $5 sight unseen (sound unheard?) and enjoyed the record. And I hate slam poetry so this is an achievement.

(I previously posted something similar, but my browser was acting up. If this is a double post, apologies)

I think Reznor blew it by anticipating that the general public (even that which is on the first wave of blog-hype) will unconditionally care about bitrate. For every audiophile out there, there's at least ten people that simply want something sounding decent that fits on their Ipod. Radiohead enabled people to get the high bitrate as part of the discbox set, but those people were all fetishists to begin with. 160kbps is fine for what most people use their music for, and having something three times the size taking up valuable Ipod space isn't always desirable. While I don't know for sure whether the overall financial haul would've been bigger with a straight up Radiohead model, I do think that more than a few die-hard fans simply didn't give a shit that one file had different compression, and without an e-tip jar to toss Saul a couple bucks, simply took the freebie and left.

Trent & Saul fucked this whole thing up, IMHO.

First of all, people have to hear something and decide they like it before they buy it, right?

The options were A): Pay 5 bucks and download the record or B): Pay nothing and download the record.

How about adding a simple C): Here, check this record out and if you dig it, either A) download it for nothing or B) Do the right thing and cough up five bones to support the artist.