Apparently, Jane Siberry doesn’t appreciate people calling attention to her website, which allows people to pay as they wish to download Siberry’s music. I liked the idea, and blogged about it a few days ago. But here’s what Siberry wrote on her MySpace journal today:
The ’self-determined pricing’ policy of the store is in the spotlight again, freakonomics has an online article; abc news emailed. I don’t want the attention. I think I’ll change the pricing to ‘you can pay me all you want but i’m not going to let you hear it’.
Youch. Regrets, Ms. Siberry. Seems as we have a lousy track record with pop singers — anybody remember Levitt’s “Thomas Dolby has a new record” announcement?
Levitt wanted me to add that he owns two Jane Siberry CDs from before the self-determined pricing era.
I guess we should give up pop singers and stick to crack dealers, real-estate agents, and poker cheats.
11 Comments
Sheesh. It must be nice to be simultaneously obscure and yet independently wealthy enough to not appreciate further attention.
— tim in tampaI wonder if the people who already knew about her website were devoted enough fans that they would pay, but the merely curious stragglers didn’t? I can see publicity having that downside.
— dratskeedratskee has a good point. I wonder what if any the difference between an obscure site or store and a popular one? And when an obscure site/store is publicized what happens to the sales then?
— ganesha23She would lose out if her actual fans buy close to the average price and newcomers pay nothing and her number of fans is constant.
So as newcomers come and pay nothing, it drives down her average price, and her fans will still buy the same quantity but at a lower price.
But some of the newcomers will become fans. If she gains a sufficient number of fans relative to the total number of newcomers, it would offset the lowered average selling price.
The fact that she doesn’t like the publicity suggests that she herself believes that it won’t help her get very many fans relative to freeriders.
She may want to adjust the average price paid by song by conditioning it on people who actually paid more than 1 cent to circumvent the problem of her fans using the average price to figure out what is the approximite value of her songs (conditional on the option that it is free)
— sophistryIf she thinks that her demand is that elastic, perhaps she should hire new PR people.
— bgriffsI remember the famous snark that Bloomingdales gave Murdoch when he tried to get them to buy ads in his papers.
— wkwillis“Your readers are our shoplifters.”
It’s the “fear” that obscure future for her site that worries her much. Or perhaps she can perceive a bright booming site but that is far beyond her mind.
— SiwiIt’s the “fear” of the obscure future for her site that worries her much. Or perhaps she can perceive a bright booming site but that is far beyond her mind.
— SiwiUmmmmm…Testing
— blou888It’s the “fear” that obscure future for her site that worries her much. Or perhaps she can perceive a bright booming site but that is far beyond her mind.
— blou888There’s something that makes me ill about the artist that wails about people paying attention to their work. They have success, and don’t want it… Perhaps the whole idea of having a web page eludes this sort?
If you put something out there, don’t be surprised that people pay attention. Don’t be surprised that those people stop listening when you get in their faces about paying attention to you.
I know too many artists who fear attention lest they are tempted to “sell out”, or are perceived to have done so by their peers.
My advice, Jane; stop broadcasting / publishing if you don’t really want the attention.
Sophistry above suggests that “She would lose out if her actual fans buy close to the average price and newcomers pay nothing and her number of fans is constant.” which I don’t believe is necessarily true (ignoring web hosting and bandwidth costs); the newcomers may never have heard her name or her music before, and were outside of the original equation…
More eyes means more downloads, and more of a chance of payment. Sure, the percentage paid per song may drop as more looky-loos (listeny-loos?) show up, but they’re also not likely to download her whole catalog before deciding they don’t care for it, so the effect should be nothing more than a blip. At the end of the day, though, the total payment should go up with more eyes; net win.
— xinit