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1:48 pm
QuoteHi all,
I don't know if anyone here has tried or advocated for a pay-what-you-want pricing schema before, but I have been trying it with my new release and I'm happy to say so far the results have been great.
My release is only 4 tracks, so iTunes and Amazon have both set the price at $3.96. (Bastards.) I learned from MMM to try and undercut them on my sales page, and I was kind of depressed about having to charge even less than this for my music, which represents an investment of around $3000 (plus plenty of blood, toil, tears, and sweat, needless to say). So I decided to experiment for the first time ever with a pay-what-you-want mechanism. People can literally pay a penny if they want for the music, and there is no maximum if they want to pay more.
I found a way to set this up using PayPal and have been talking up my sales page on my email newsletter and social media. Since yesterday's launch I have sold 4 downloads, priced at $1, $5, $10, and $25, for a total of $41, or $10.25 average price, which is way more than I ever would have gotten selling 4 copies on iTunes. As a perk I have also gotten some favorable PR on twitter (@AngelinaPanozzo: "What a GREAT way to encourage supporting new music! Kudos!!")
The beauty is that ~$10 per download is what I would have hoped for anyway, so by letting people pay more if they choose, it has had a way of balancing out the lower bids. This might not work for every release, but I'm happy to share my success with this so far.
UPDATE: Since I started writing this message one more person has bought a download for $10, bringing the total up to $51. I've only been doing this since December and I'm not selling a ton of music yet, but I'm really happy about how this is going so far.
Ezra
That's awesome Ezra. I haven't personally ever done a "pay what you want" campaign, but everything you are saying makes perfect sense, and it's a great way of dealing with competing against the low prices on Amazon and iTunes. Well done.
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8:59 pm
June 9, 2011
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Hi Ezra,
Your results are actually pretty interesting.
The part that I personally think is cool about the pay-what-you-want approach is that you allow people to tell you the value they have put on your recording. It's very free market and I dig it.
That said, you'll always get a few people who pay as little as possible, but I get the feeling that people who understand what you are trying to do appreciate it and pay more.
Good stuff. Thanks for sharing.
-Steve
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