Pay what you want

Great post from Joy at Grassrootsy.

You read so much stuff about how 'freemium' or 'pay what you want' pricing works for musicians and other creatives, but you don't often see artists (who aren't major label escapees!) prepared to test it and then disseminate their results.

So, it's great to see a post where the artist has done it and passes on their experience.

I am sure you have come across this model recently, artists making their work available for whatever fans want to pay for it.  It has been called by many names (pay what you want, pay what you can, pay what you think it’s worth etc), but they all essentially mean the same thing.  The artist gives the audience the choice as to how much money they spend on the music.

And with this in mind, I come to the main point of this post: using the pay what you want model with merchandise at live shows.  I started doing this over two years ago when I toured around the UK.  I know of a few musicians who do the same now, but have mainly encountered a response of fear when encouraging others to try it.

You can read the whole thing here.

And this is a link to a post that they refer to by Derek Sivers on the same topic.