ExperienceCurve by Karl Long

radiohead breaks the mold here entirely with a “set your own price” of their digital download, but the lesson here is if your going to do something entirely groundbreaking for customers you have to explain it very clearly.

So the new Radiohead album In Rainbows will be available tomorrow as a DRM free digital download, that’s awesome in its own right, but they are going to let you, the buyer set the price (you can get an awesome disk set for 40 quid which comes with the download for free). Here’s a screenshot of the shopping cart where you can fill in your own price.

You mean it’s up to me?

That doesn’t sound right.

As Joseph Jaffe said in his best Keanu Reeves impression, Whoa. Agreed, whoa, that was my reaction when I was trying to buy the album a couple of days ago. Funnily enough though I never completed the transaction because I didn’t really get it, and radiohead didn’t implement it very well. What I mean by that is they didn’t explain it was the honor system, but they just left the price blank, and also stated that a transaction fee would be added. Unfortunately even after adding the electronic download to the shopping cart it still wasn’t clear how much I was going to be charged. So what did I do, same thing all consumers do when they are not sure what is happening, they bail out Great idea, poor execution. If your going to do something that breaks the mold completely, you should probably make an effort to explain exactly what you’re doing.

After bailing out the first time and getting the courage to approach this new shopping experience again, I went through the process again. I paid 5 pounds which is probably the equivalent of $10.