Trent Reznor gave an interview yesterday, where he states his thoughts on music in the digital age and his Saul Williams experiment. Here are some points he made, which I found very interesting. (A full version of the inteview can be found at news Blog.)

On his disappointment over the sales

I’m not disappointed with the numbers with Saul at all. I think, particularly looking at what he’s done historically and in the climate of today’s music scene, that’s something to be proud of….here’s the record in as great a quality as you could ever want, it’s available now and it’s offered for an insulting low price, which I consider $5 to be, I thought that it would appeal to more people than it did. That’s where my sense of disappointment is in general, that the idea was wrong in my head and for once I’ve given people too much credit.

On the future of music

• In my mind, I think if there was an ISP tax of some sort, we can say to the consumer, “All music is now available and able to be downloaded and put in your car and put in your iPod and put up you’re a** if you want, and it’s $5 on your cable bill or ISP bill.

• If I could redo everything and start again, I think having a physical product is a good thing. I think that having some more coordination on our part–and I’ll take the blame on that because there was an urgency to get this done and get it out that I was the ringleader for–I think if we could wave a magic wand and do it again I think being able to offer an inexpensive version in addition to a premium physical product that could be shipped out afterward.

On the Radiohead Project

I’ll name check Radiohead on this–they’ve done a pretty suave marketing plan on this new record. I think generally it’s been a pretty cool thing, but what they’ve done is used those (sales) numbers in a way that they can spin them anyway they want cause you don’t know what they are.

Two points drew my attention at most:

• “…in my head and for once I’ve given people too much credit.” The sales percentage seems to agree with that point, but is it really so or is it just the public that Saul Williams adresses to?

• “All music is now available and able to be downloaded and put in your car and put in your iPod and put up you’re a** if you want, and it’s $5 on your cable bill or ISP bill.” So many questions emerge from this thought: Would you be willing to pay such a tax? How much would you be willing to pay? Would you think that such a tax, would be the beginning of an internet tax in general?

The tax issue

• On the one hand it seems unfair to tax the whole internet community for something (downloading music) that just a percentage of the users does.

It also seems hard to imagine all the participants (artists, industries, government) trying to share the income of this tax. How would be the percentage divided?

• On the other hand it could be just a tax on subscribed downloaders. Only users who download the music, would pay a certain amount. But it is something we have already witnessed (Napster, Rhapsody) and it doesn’t work. But Reznor also talks about the physical product. I would gladly pay 5$ tax or registration to get the original cd shipped to me, instead of just the digital version.

An interesting discussion on the subject goes on at Matthew Ingram’s post “Hey Trent - a music tax is a dumb idea“. I wouldn’t go that far, to say it’s a dump idea, but surely there are many-many parameters we should take account, in order for such a proposal to be successful and fair.

It would be dumb, if it were to start an avalanche of internet taxes in general (in youtube videos, online books, radio stations etc).