Sales secondary in this business model

Mash-up artist Girl Talk's new album, "Feed the Animals" comes with some impressive numbers: About 300 sampled songs on 14 tracks that play for a manic 55 minutes.

One number it doesn't come with, however, is a price.

That's because Girl Talk, as Gregg Gillis calls himself, is adopting the model pioneered by artists such as Radiohead that allows fans to name their own price for a digital download of his new album. Although Radiohead never disclosed how many downloads it sold, it didn't appear to harm CD sales when the album was released several months later.

Gillis' strategy will test whether an independent artist who has never benefited from the backing of a major record label can build an audience and generate income on the experimental pay-what-you-want model. At the same time, "Feed the Animals" must maintain a low-enough profile to ensure the samples -- brief excerpts from other artists' music -- used without permission on the album go uncontested by their copyright holders.

"It's a perfect model for the kinds of acts that appeal to a devoted group of fans who are older than teenagers on average, and who are computer literate," said Aram Sinnreich, managing partner at Radar Research, a media consulting firm. "Anybody who's a fan of remixes and mash-ups is going to be inclined in that direction."

Whether they will be sufficiently inclined to pay for something they can also get free is an open question. "Feed the Animals" is the fourth album from Gillis, a Pittsburgh resident known for taking samples from the music of other artists and mixing them into a new song. A single track on "Feed the Animals" can include more than a dozen snippets of songs from such artists as Kanye West, Ace of Base, Cat Stevens and Salt-N-Pepa.

Several retailers -- including iTunes -- wouldn't sell Gillis' 2006 "Night Ripper" when it was released because he had not obtained permission to use the samples in the album.

This time, however, there is no middleman to block sales.

People who want to buy Gillis' new album simply go to the Internet site and type in the price they are willing to pay for the download. If they don't want to pay, they must check off one of eight reasons, including "I may donate later," "I can't afford to pay," and "I don't really like Girl Talk," before downloading. Those who pay $10 (plus shipping) also will get a CD sent to them when it's released in September.