Life after Radiohead's "in Rainbows"

With all the controversy surrounding Radiohead's pay as you like-experiment (update : despite the Comcast-data inspired negativity, Radiohead made more money out of "in Rainbows" than out of all the other Radiohead releases put together!), one might forget that more artists have followed Radiohead's example.

Trent Reznor from NIN-fame produced and released Saul Williams new album through the same distribution model as Radiohead although a little different : the record could be downloaded for free at a low 192 kbs quality or for 5€ at 320kbs. Last week Trent Reznor posted the first sales results on the NIN-homepage :

Saul's previous record was released in 2004 and has sold 33,897 copies.

As of 1/2/08,
154,449 people chose to download Saul's new record.
28,322 of those people chose to pay $5 for it, meaning:
18.3% chose to pay.

While you might think that 18,3% paying customers is a disappointing figure, there's another side to the story. Because of the free publicity surrounding the stunt, the marketing budget was near to zero. And also:

Saul's music is in more peoples' iPods than ever before and people are interested in him. He'll be touring throughout the year and we will continue to get the word out however we can.. 

Find the complete story here. Meanwhile, Saul Williams' Niggy Tardust album is still up for downloading : free or at 5$. It's up to you...