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: 78.89%)
• Osama has won (sorta), why the music biz secretly hates downloads, and how much should petrol cost? (25 September 2005; score: 44.6%)
• Doing the math on music videos: surprisingly cheap (17 February 2005; score: 42.27%)