Can variable pricing work for all artists, or just a chosen few?

Variable pricing seems to work for Reznor.
But can it work for everyone?

When Radiohead released In Rainbows under a "pay whatever you want" model, critics hailed the move as ground-breaking. While only about 40% of users paid, and those that did paid far less than the cost of a typical CD, the lack of a label to gobble up profits made the project a success.

Trent Reznor followed by releasing an instrumental album under a variable pricing scheme, followed by a completely free album (which will later be released for sale in stores). Again, critics applauded the innovation and the releases received widespread coverage.

But Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails are both long-time critical favorites, and both had plenty of early-mover goodwill. Would either have been as successful without the waves of free publicity that surrounded their releases?

Lesser known artists like Saul Williams have had mixed results releasing music under a variable pricing structure. Williams' The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust allowed fans to name their price: either $5 or free. Despite having Reznor's marketing push behind him, the results were disappointing as only 20% of users chose to pay. Predictably, when Reznor expressed frustration with those numbers he was slammed by proponents of free pricing.

More recently, mashup master Girl Talk has released his latest album under the Radiohead model. Will listeners be willing to pay for an album that, while undoubtedly creative, consists entirely of samples of other artists work? Interestingly, a user who chooses not to pay for the album is presented with a followup page asking them to explain why. It will be interesting to see if Girl Talk releases the results of that survey.

So far, the results of variable pricing have been mixed: some high profile success stories, some lesser-known disappointments. But what happens when the model is adopted by artists who don't have favored status with the critics? And more interesting, what happens when the model is common enough that a "pay what you want" album is no longer considered news? Is this model the way of the future, or a limited niche market that can only work for a select few?

I suspect it may be the later. And I suspect it won't matter, since artists may ultimately have little choice but to put the power in the hands of the consumers. Time will tell if that turns out to have been a good thing.

The Six Laws Of Customer Experience: Go download them now

Bruce Temkin from the excellent Customer Experience Matters has released an expanded version of his Six Laws Of Customer Experience as a free e-book.

The PDF download is available on his site, and you should go grab it right now. While the laws don't focus exclusively on the web, they're still excellent reading for any e-marketer.

And if you're in a hurry, don't despair: Temkin's e-book is a quick read, weighing in at only 11 pages.

(Or, as Seth Godin calls it, a trilogy.)

Is emarketing moving too fast for books?

Next to my desk I have a stack of emarketing books that I've collected over the past few years. Anyone who wants to can drop by and borrow one. Sometimes a colleague will ask for a recommendation.

Two of my favorite books are The Long Tail by Chris Anderson, and Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams. Both books are landmarks that fundamentally changed the way we think about marketing on the web. They're exhaustively researched, well-written and generally fascinating.

And I don't recommend either to my colleagues.

It's not because I want to keep them to myself. It's that both suffer from the curse of the great emarketing book: they were so good that they made themselves obsolete. To read either book today, for the first time, would seem like a waste. The reader would spend most of their time thinking "but everybody already knows this stuff!"

Keep in mind, both books are less than two years old. In two years, these titles went from being ground-breaking new ideas to generally accepted wisdom to "ho-hum, tell me something I don't know". In fact, both seem outdated today. Wikinomics because many of the sites it referenced have already come and gone, and The Long Tail because further research on the subject is already causing the theory to evolve.

Two years.

I thought that was ridiculously fast. Then I read Groudswell, by Charlene Li.

Groundswell, a guide to social marketing based on Li's research at Forrester, has been on the shelf for all of three months. And it already feels outdated in several spots.

For example, Li makes several mentions of a new micro-blogging platform called Twitter. New? In the time since the book was written, Twitter has been annointed the next great web success story, been plagued by well-publicized technical issues, been surpassed in buzz by sites like Plurk and Friendfeed, and risen from the ashes as a comeback story.

Which begs the question: is there even a point to reading books about social media trends and technologies? (For what its worth, books about human factors and usability have far more staying power. As Jakob Nielsen is fond of saying, technology changed quicky, human nature doesn't.)

Is it possible to write a book about what's happening today that won't seem like a hopeless relic by the time it rolls off the publisher's press? Can we still learn something from a book that we can't find in our favorite blogs? Or should I just clear off my book shelf and set up an RSS feed to Six Pixels instead?

Moving the meter

One of my favorite books on web design is Don't Make me Think by Steve Krug.

In addition to being a crystal clear guide to thinking about web usability, the book has plenty of nifty illustrations that bring the points home. One of my favorites is a series of drawings of users with little meters next to their heads. As the user gets frustrated, the meter fills up. When it hits the top, they vanish.

I think its a great metaphor, and I end up using "the meter" to guide my own thinking about building usable web sites.

Every user has a meter that moves up (or down) as they move through your site. If you reach the top of the meter, the user gets fed up and leaves. If you can make it to the end of your conversion flow without filling up the meter, you get the sale (or the lead, or the trial, or whatever else your goal may be).

Here's the trick: every user has a different meter. And you have no way of knowing, or controlling, how big or small that meter will be. A user who really, really wants to buy what you're selling may have a great big meter than you'd have a hard time filling all the way to the top. Another user, in the middle of a bad day, may have a little tiny meter that's almost full before you even get a chance to make a first impression.

Since you don't know how much space you have to work with, you're left with only one option: do everything you can do avoid moving your visitor's meter in the wrong direction. Sure, you can always justify one more minor annoyance -- "they've come this far, they won't really mind". But that's a dangerous game, because you never know which minor problem will be the one that fills a user's meter and sends them off to your competitor.

What makes the meter go up? All users are different, but the following are good bets to annoy users and raise the meter:

• Anything that slows things down: Long load times, 404 errors, unneccessary flash
  
• Information that's hard to find, or isn't where it seems like it should be
  
• Fluffy marketing-speak that doesn't actually say anything
  
• Asking for a user to give you their personal information unless you have a really good reason
  
• Hidden charges or other surprises ("oh, we didn't mention how expensive shipping was?")
  

The good news is that you can also make the meter go down by doing things like:

• Having the right information appear right where the user expects it
  
• A clean, professional design that's appropriate to the target audience
  
• Content that sounds like it was written by a human being instead of a corporate buzzword marchine

The bottom line: Every time you consider adding an element to your site -- text, an image, flash, a new feature -- ask yourself first: "Is this going to move the meter? And in which direction?"