Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

"Price as Signal" - very interesting piece

(1/4) > >>

mouser:
really interesting piece today on the idea of different pricing for music:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/11/18.html

as a side note: personally i'm conflicted about joel's writing - on one hand he is regularly and undeniably insightfull.  on the other hand i almost always get an unpleasent feeling when reading his site, related to the self promotion and hard-sell of his own stuff.

mouser:
from the article:

"Let's think this through, because I think the recording industry is lying about why they want different prices."
--- End quote ---

"The answer is that pricing sends a signal. People have come to believe that “you get what you pay for.” If you lowered the price of a movie, people would immediately infer from the low price that it's a crappy movie and they wouldn't go see it.... Now, the reason the music recording industry wants different prices has nothing to do with making a premium on the best songs. What they really want is a system they can manipulate to send signals about what songs are worth, and thus what songs you should buy. "
--- End quote ---

in fact i think joel is right, and it's one of the reasons that very cheap software does not do so well, and why making your program more expensive can sometimes result in more copies being sold.

it's also a problem for a site like ours - people will assume that the software is of a lesser quality because it's free.  it takes some effort to overcome these obstacles.

Carol Haynes:
Glad some one else reads Joel ... I saw that too ...

Actually I am more cynical - I think they want iTunes to vary the price simply so they can charge more ...

mouser:
new idea:

let's charge $100 each for each of the donationcoder.com programs.

but then have the option that you can make a single one-time donation of any amount to get all programs forever.

best of both worlds?  :tellme:

Jibz:
I was quite intrigued by the Fog Creek Copilot service he advertises at the bottom of that page.

Imagine taking open-source remote control software like VNC and letting it pass through your servers to be able to charge money by the minute .. amazing creativity.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page