Music and Selling

Lots of creative people have internal conflicts over selling the art they create. And in today's music industry, emerging artists need to prove their business acumen as much as they need to show their musicality.

A small but critical part of this equation is deciding what price to put on your CDs. I've struggled with this for a while. You want to honour the work that went into producing it, but you also have to realize that not everyone is willing to throw down $20 for a CD, even if they enjoyed your live show.

Lately, I've been experimenting with a "pay what you feel" approach. My rationale is two-fold: 1) It is more important to me, at this stage in my career, that my music is spread far and wide than it is to make a certain amount from CD sales, and 2) I think people come away from the transaction with a good feeling - they have gotten what they wanted at a price that made sense to them.

The surprise that came from the first few shows in this experiment is that my sales income was amazing. It was difficult to track it precisely, but I brought in about triple what I would usually expect.

Hmmm...I think there might be something to this...