Charles on… anything that comes along

• On pricing
  

  Pricing has always been a combination of economics and marketing and luck. My hero Joel Spolsky (best engineer who knows how to write) has a piece on this at Joel on Software.

The thing is, I disagree with him.

Pricing is a very effective signaling device, no doubt about it. People (and businesses) assume that good stuff is worth more. People pay for stuff on eBay for stuff based on the velocity of the auction instead of the innate value of the item. Real estate brokers warn you that a house that doesn’t sell right away is hard to sell because people look at a house that’s been on the market for a few months differently. All irrational and all based on signaling.

The reason that lousy movies cost the same as blockbuster movies, though, doesn’t have to do with signalling.

Seth Godin Finkelstein weighs in on the “how much should music companies charge, and ought they to?” He thinks Joel Spolsky is wrong about music pricing - but his conclusion doesn’t go where you’d expect. Godin Finkelstein is worth reading on just about anything; I’ve seen him around the Net for more than ten years, always stirring things up (Seen at Seth’s Blog)

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Music biz seeks digital price rises - but why? To keep the artists in line (18 November 2005; score: 79.01%)
• Osama has won (sorta), why the music biz secretly hates downloads, and how much should petrol cost? (25 September 2005; score: 44.68%)
• Doing the math on music videos: surprisingly cheap (17 February 2005; score: 42.37%)

• The Million Dollar Homepage - Own a piece of internet history!
  The marvellous, hilarious thing is that along there with all the (sigh) p*ker and c*sino and other completely stupid things is The Times. Ho yes. But this page is like America squeezed into a little space on your screen, all at once. All the crapulousness, all at once, all the time. Any change it could just stay there? (See also American Copywriter’s misery at the sight - including a comment from someone who saw it when it had 2 pixels bought up.)
• MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | How Lost viewers lose out to the ad breaks
  

  Short-changed fans of the mysterious Channel 4 show Lost have been given the answer to at least one nagging question as Ofcom revealed that each 65-minute episode contained just 36 minutes of new footage owing to the onslaught of advertisements.

  This is how the creeping advert culture is eating up your time. Half an hour of ads to see a half-hour program? No wonder PVRs and DVD-recorders are getting so popular.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• iCame, iSaw, iPodded (again); and HDTV comes gradually to the UK (15 August 2005; score: 39.18%)
• Eudora "Not enough disk space for that" answer, and Postfix woes (28 February 2005; score: 28.51%)
• "We should be on Mars by now" - but it's a good thing we aren't (5 October 2004; score: 24.31%)