As a kind of follow-up to the last post… and again, before I begin the official contest blogs (I have to work with the first chapter a bit first)… I should mention, by way of related news but not directly as a part of this process, that I seem to be doing something a bit radical.
It’s something I’ve toyed with for a while but never quite had the nerve to pull the trigger on, but for various reasons this seems like the right time to do it. I am throwing my entire musical catalog open to a pay-what-you-want pricing model.
I know this probably sounds like financial suicide for a musician, given especially that the back-catalog is one of my major assets… hang on, that’s interesting. I was going to say it was my only asset, then changed that to major asset, but that’s still not right. My major asset is my musical ability, personality, vision, personal and artistic voice. The brand. The back catalog is one facet of that, but what I’m capable of, the music I’ve yet to make, is a larger thing.
And that is only valuable if people are listening… (If you create great music and no-one ever hears it, did it ever really happen? Who knows how many other Emily Dickinsons there have been whose work was never discovered, or Franz Kafkas whose deathbed wishes for their entire artistic output to be destroyed were heeded instead of, thankfully, ignored.)
perspective…
This ‘name your price’ model has been tried by various artists (most famously, of course, Radiohead, but they were not the first – Magnatune built an entire label on the concept, and Canada’s own Jane Sibbery tried it a few years earlier as well, with average sales posted on the website) and from what I have been able to gather, the results are frequently surprising:
- people are often quite willing to pay more than they have to for music they like
- they feel better about it, especially when they know the money goes directly to the artist
- if they take an album or some tracks for free, they tend strongly to come back and pay for some more later on (the reciprocity response)
- and it’s a great marketing device, drawing much more attention than might otherwise accrue to the artist or album if it were presented in a ‘normal’, protective manner.
- in many cases, even with a significantly lower average price per sale, the artists make more money overall, and get much more exposure for future projects, whether they choose to continue with the same model or not
So if it works so well, why don’t more artists do this (I suspect more artists are in fact beginning to, but it’s still considered a fairly radical thing to do)? Perhaps because it’s so counter-intuitive to take something that you work long and hard at, and invest everything you have into, and let go of it completely – release control, stop jealously guarding and protecting it, let people take it for nothing (or next to nothing) if they want to, or pay more if they get meaning and value out of it. If you believe your work has value, there’s a good chance someone else will too. Is it so crazy to let them decide?
My own rationale is that I’d rather have people hear my music than not hear it, I’d rather they take it for free than ignore it, I’d rather they pay a little than nothing at all. In any case, it would be hard to make a lot less than I’ve been making from the catalog recently, and any increase in exposure can only help. So if letting go of the protective mindset can achieve that, I’m all for it.
I actually have no idea whether Ariel (Hyatt, see previous post) would recommend this approach or not (if it’s in the book, I haven’t gotten that far yet; perhaps she’ll comment on it here?) – not that I am necessarily committed to doing everything exactly the way she would recommend… even though she obviously has more experience and a better track record with music marketing than I do.
No, I’m a stubborn old goat in some ways, and for the moment I am going with my gut on this one. There’s something psychologically liberating about it, like letting go of my tether to the past and moving forwards with a fresh start and an open mind. I’m proud of the music I’ve made, I do believe it has value and I’m thrilled when it reaches people… but in a certain sense I think that holding onto it has been holding me back.
It’s a kind of experiment, and I can always change the rules later on if I’m not happy with the results. Either way, I’ll keep you posted…
