Radiohead introduces world to great concept.

This week a favorite band of mine, Radiohead, did something that is shaking up the record industry. They released their latest album, In Rainbows, on the Internet and allowed buyers to set their own price for it. If you think it is worth $12, that’s what you pay. If you think it’s worth nothing, then it’s free. After setting the amount you think it’s worth, you then receive a code that allows you to download it to your computer, and then you can burn it to a CD or put it on your iPod.
I’m not a fan of music as computer files because I’d rather have a physical copy of the CD made by a record company. Actual CDs are more durable and sound better than any burned CD ever could.
But I really like this name-your-price concept. I just want to apply it to other things.
Especially for meals at restaurants. More times than not I’ve walked away from a restaurant saying I overpaid for that meal. One time my wife ordered something, received the wrong meal, and then after realizing two bites into the meal it wasn’t what she ordered, she told the waitress they had made a mistake. The waitress apologized and took the food back, only to return a few minutes later and say that the owner/cook said we had to pay for the two bites she had eaten.
Needless to say, we never returned to that restaurant. And if I had this pay-what-you-please option, the restaurant would have received nothing for my wife’s meal and another nothing for mine, since I couldn’t enjoy it because I was fuming about the boldnicity of the owner/cook making us pay for two bites.
Another good place for this concept to apply would be at the movie theater. In addition to pricing popcorn and other movie food at reasonable prices, we could pay for admission after we see the movie determined on how well we liked it. After seeing the “Lord of the Rings” movies, I would have gladly paid more than $10.21.
But after seeing “Joe Versus the Volcano,” the all-time worst movie I’ve ever seen in a theater, I would have demanded Tom Hanks, the star who went on to much better things, personally pay me at least $3.17 for sitting through that garbage. Plus I would have made him change the ending so the volcano would have won.
If we could set our own prices for movies based on how good they are, you better believe Hollywood would turn out higher quality product. They’d get rid of cheap, rip-off sequels that are only made to capitalize on the success of the original. I’m not against sequels, just the bad ones – hello “Jaws 4: The Revenge” and “Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.”
Making better products would apply to everybody in a pay-what-it’s-worth world. I’m only 32, but I remember the appliances and televisions my parents bought when I was a kid lasted 20 or more years. Heck my grandma’s got the same fridge she had when I was a little boy begging for more of her homemade applesauce. Today’s fridges, televisions, washers and dryers, and stoves are lucky to last 10 years. And I think we should be able to pay accordingly. Maybe they’d last a little longer.
Manufacturers and other producers would argue that they’d never be able to make any money if people could set their own prices for their products, but I disagree. People are always happy to pay for good products, and even more for better products. So they’ll set a fair price and may even pay a little more if it’s something they know they’ll like.
I’ve never tried this, but I heard that rummage sales where items don’t have prices, the consumer makes an offer, do better than rummage sales with prices. It makes sense, because I believe I’ve under-priced a lot of rummage sale items out of my need to just get rid of them. If people have to make an offer, they’ll price it at a value it’s worth to them.
I haven’t set a price for Radiohead’s album yet. I know it’ll be good, but I want to go back and listen to all of my other Radiohead albums I paid full-market price for and then determine if I overpaid or underpaid. Then I’ll set a price. I’m thinking it’ll be around $10.11.