NINE INCH NAILED

Last November, Reznor, inspired by Radiohead’s “pay-what-you-want” cyber-tip jar model, offered fans a free, lower-quality version of hip-hop artist Saul Williams’ The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust, an album he produced. He also gave them the choice of paying $5 for higher-fidelity tracks to help support the artist.

Now, the results are in, and they offer even more contradictions.

According to Reznor, 154,449 people downloaded the album for free, with only 28,322 paying five bucks for it. As a comparison, Williams’ previous album, released three years ago on CD, has sold 33,987 copies.

Wrote Reznor: “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."

True, the artist now gets to keep more of the revenue, but Reznor, who paid to produce the album, the bandwidth and to set up an online store, writes on his site: "Nobody's getting rich off this project… [Still], Saul's music is in more people's iPods than ever before and people are interested in him.”

Williams is currently on tour.