# Pricing: Free or Not Free?



## JMAA (Dec 21, 2009)

Thinking about something, I might take the decision on making my albums priced or free. But it's a hard decision: putting a price on an album would anyway make it loose audience in some way, and freeing the album doesn't have any income at all.
All I guess is that the income would be something extra (I have got a job), so to say, "an emergency income" in early times. But people lately like everything free, correct me if I'm mistaken, but I would rather get something in exchange so I can survive a little more to the daily basis of routine (or maybe buy something out of Steam or anything).
So the question is: should I price or not?


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## protocollie (Dec 21, 2009)

Unless you have fans who are not your friends, putting a price on your music will not do you any good. Seriously.

Post it for free, and once you see people talking about it and start charting on last.fm or are out regularly playing shows you can afford to ask people for money. Otherwise you're shooting yourself in the foot.


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## JMAA (Dec 21, 2009)

Maybe pricing Inferno because it's getting too much fans is a mistake? I was just encouraging to let people download the rest, like Re_Volution and others.


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## Shade Koba (Dec 25, 2009)

What I do is price albums, but make them ungodly cheap x3 that way, everyone wins! Plus, with BandCamp, you can preview the songs anyways  Besides, there's not many fans that'd bother to go download the music when it's readily available on FA xD


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## JMAA (Dec 25, 2009)

Shade Koba said:


> What I do is price albums, but make them ungodly cheap x3 that way, everyone wins! Plus, with BandCamp, you can preview the songs anyways  Besides, there's not many fans that'd bother to go download the music when it's readily available on FA xD



Yeah, I always use Bandcamp, and that's a pro anyway, because, no one wants to listen lately to a 1 minute sample as Trent Reznor suggests.
I normally price my albums to 5 â‚¬ and 1 â‚¬ each song.


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## Aden (Dec 25, 2009)

JMAA said:


> So the question is: should I price or not?



The real question is: is it worth paying for or not?

Ask yourself honesty. Ask other people and urge them to be honest. I haven't listened so I can't give me opinion right now.


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## Shade Koba (Dec 25, 2009)

JMAA said:


> Yeah, I always use Bandcamp, and that's a pro anyway, because, no one wants to listen lately to a 1 minute sample as Trent Reznor suggests.
> I normally price my albums to 5 â‚¬ and 1 â‚¬ each song.



well I dont really know much about... I'll assume that's Euros x3 But I price my albums roughly around $4, and just add about $2 if they want a hard copy, since it costs about that much for shipping. For individual songs, I usually price em about $0.50


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## GraemeLion (Dec 25, 2009)

If you're not willing to charge for your work, then it's something you consider a hobby.   It's nice to make music for free, but if you really want to consider yourself a professional type, you need to jump out there and find out


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## JMAA (Dec 26, 2009)

So I recently changed to USD today, and now I've made everything cheaper, like 4$ the album and 0.50$ the song. Soon I'll post a priced album.


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## Duality Jack (Dec 26, 2009)

MUSIC SALES RULE OF THUMB:
If you do not do live performances that people pay to go too (even small gigs) Do not charge for your music,


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## JMAA (Dec 26, 2009)

The Drunken Ace said:


> MUSIC SALES RULE OF THUMB:
> If you do not do live performances that people pay to go too (even small gigs) Do not charge for your music,



True.


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## Zolen (Dec 26, 2009)

have all of them have a general price then on random songs give out a freebie.

It might work if you get to be well known to boost your views, as you said everyone likes free but when its rare that its free more people are going to take notice.


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## Lyxen (Jan 7, 2010)

i do gigs and still my music is free


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## Tudd (Jan 9, 2010)

Put it up for free, and have a donation button. DONE!


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## HotActionYiffFur (Jan 10, 2010)

I hand out tunes to people all the time, I'll only hold back if I feel the track is produced well enough to show a label rep, but even so my close friends always get dubs of mine.


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