It's the same paradox of well.. everything in the universe. By the time you had enough followers/traffic/brand identity to SELL THOUSANDS OF BEATS for .99, you'd also be in a position to NOT sell beats for 99 cents. There's hundreds of analogies and real world business models that have these ideas in practice.
When I see cats pretending to be thinking outside of the box by doing WHAT EVERYONE'S ALREADY BEEN DOING, I laugh at the amount of attention small things get in some peoples minds. EVERY COMPANY has a scale to their service/products. Even LUXURY BRAND-savvy companies do this.
Why is it debatable for you to think the same way?
Ever heard the cliche You Get What You Pay For?
You sell anything, there aught to be a range. Something Deluxe, Something Standard, Something Limited.
Matter of fact, I can't think of anything sold without options.
.99 beats = .99 Songs- no comparison really.
There's no Branding behind 99 cent beats.
An artist has concerts, merch and 20 other things tied to their Brand.
If 1,000 people bought the SAME track for 99 cents, the guy selling it is an idiot.
And to make the point even more ridiculous, If YOU had a beat that was on YOUR site selling One-Thousand Times Over and I asked to BUY that beat from you for $50 bucks to sell on my site for .99 Cents, would you sell it to me?
Why not? For this new internet math, I'm buying your beat for 50 X what it's worth. Huge profit to you!
No, because you suddenly feel like that beat it worth MORE to you than 99 cents.
Which now exposes that you must have thoughts your beats were indeed worth 99 cent when you started selling them (Meaning you had NO SALES) or else 99 cents wouldn't be your starting price. No one who is selling beats at $50 a pop and doing okay there is going to think 99 cents is a better way to go.
When you can't sell enough at your price, you change your prices or sometimes change your product.
Business 101 and common sense.
Troup has a site selling 99 cents beats (IndustrySound, I believe). If those were all his beats, I'd laugh at him.
If there are a bunch of OTHER CATS beats, then it makes sense and I like the idea.
The dilemma is there's 8 million other sites doing the same thing. And all the beats sound the same.
Plus the fact that NO ONE likes to trawl through beats, you have another paradox.
So how do you....
Offer few, high quality (meaning usable) tracks at a low price and put a proper filter in place so I like what I hear when I window shop and include enough membership to be in business with all the running costs and...and offer enough variety?
Not even soundclick has figured that out too good. And they been around for a minute.
How do you build the brand, how much does it cost to be known as a place to go?
To be honest, If this was my plan, I would sell (my own) sneakers, skinny jeans, costume jewelry and fitted hats on a site with amateur porn playing while I promoted the place for giving away INDUSTRY READY BEETZ for REAL RAPPERZ.
