Freaknomics on Jane Siberry's pay-what-you-want music store

Cory Doctorow 10:03 pm Wed May 3, 2006

Chris sez, "Stephen J. Dubner, half the authors of Freakonomics, is one happy ~~economist~~ journalist as he reviews how Jane Siberry is leveraging the net and economics to make for a new way to make money selling her tunes online. Basically, she lets you pay what you want, when you want – but by letting you know what others are doing, she encourages you to not be left behind. Net result? It looks like given a choice, on average, people pay *more* than at iTunes!"

Siberry posts the average payment rate for each song as you pull your payment option from the drop-down menu–another reminder that, Hey, you're more than welcome to steal this music but here's how other people have acted in the recent past. Methinks Ms. Siberry grasps the power of incentives quite well. This allows for at least a couple of interesting things to happen: people can decide what to pay after they hear the music, and see how much it's worth to them (it looks like people generally pay the most per song under this option); and it takes the variable-pricing scheme that economists love and puts it in the hands of the consumer, not the seller.

(Thanks, Chris!)

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