Pay What You Want

I discovered two great blogs by musicians yesterday.  Both highly recommended!

The first is by the wonderful UK guitarist Mike Outram who writes a funny and insightful blog about music and life in general.  I've had the pleasure of working with Mike and although I knew he was an amazing musician, I never realised he was such a great writer until I discovered his blog...

The second was recommended by Mike and is from a US trumpeter called Jason Parker.  In his One Working Musician blog he writes about the daily life of a musician and chronicles his  "path to self-sufficiency" and  "thoughts on how to live a creative, art-centered life".

In one post, Jason mentions a Pay-What-You-Want system which was something I tried when selling my Licorice Kiss albums during my Arts Council sponsored tour last year.  I was a bit nervous about it at first and became even more so when a student at one gig offered me just £1.94 (the change he had in his pocket) for the album I'd been used to asking £10 for!  But strangely enough when I worked it all out at the end of the tour, I'd managed to shift an average of 10 CDs per gig which worked out to about £9.50 per album.  And I'm pretty sure that a lot of those sales wouldn't have happened at all had I stuck to my £10 per CD pricing.  In the end, most people paid £10 for it.  I also made sure to point out at the time that it was more about "Pay What You Think It's Worth" rather than "Pay What You Want" which probably accounted for those sales where people paid £15 and sometimes even £20.  Anyway, it all worked out in the end and I was one happy bunny! :-D