PRICING, PRICING, PRICING
Assuming we eventually finish this thing, we’re going to need to figure out pricing. Honestly, for the full collection, I still don’t know what to charge for this. In terms of the time and expense put into it, a high price would be justified. (At least from my perspective, not necessarily yours.) It’s way bigger than Sunset Strings, plus includes legato, which the strings didn’t.
But this still comes down to a game of “
income” = “price” x “number of sales.” For example, if I price this at $600, but sell less than half as many copies as I would have at $300, then that means a $600 price point is less profitable than at $300. I don’t happen to own a crystal ball, though, so it’s a guessing game.)
There’s another factor, though. People keep telling me,
“You can always lower a price, but you can’t raise it.” This is a good point, and I don’t want to trap myself into prioritizing a great first year at the sacrifice of subsequent years. We sold a whole lot of copies of the Ladies at $299 (sale price from $399 list.) Then about 5 years ago, I dropped the list and sale prices by a hundred bucks. I had room to do that. Contrast that with Sunset Strings, where I don’t have that room. (Not that I regret pricing it how I did mind you, but it’s already at a
“can’t go much lower” price.)
I admire OT for the boldness of charging 799€ for Wallfisch Strings. I don’t know what their numbers are on it, but they’re not dummies, so I assume they’ve done well with it. And even if it turns out that this first year is disappointing, they can sell it for half off later and clean up.
Especially since that 799€ price, justified or not, gives it a perceived higher value. Speaking for myself, I have yet to listen to any demos of Wallfisch Strings, but I
assume it must be really good because it’s expensive. It’s basic marketing psychology.
One comparison point is that this library has more content than, say, Spitfire’s Eric Whitacre Choir. But if I priced mine significantly lower, I’d be sending a message that I don’t have confidence that Sunset Choir competes favorably in quality to EWC, so I bargain priced it to compensate. Ouch. It might make more money to do that, and who knows, maybe I will. (Eric Whitacre’s $599 price is from a few years ago, so it might not be priced the same if it were released today.) But if I want to play with the big boys, I need to not be afraid to price like the big boys.
Then again, money is nice, so … I reserve the right to throw everything I just said out the window and price this at $199!
We’ll have a Lite version as well, since not everyone can justify spending a pile of money on a choir library, so we’ll have a Lite version as well. What will be in it? Heck if I know. We don’t even have a working full version yet.
An interesting thing about Lite versions: With Realivox Ladies, we sell “Complete Ladies,” which people buy mostly when it’s on sale at $199, and we sell “Ladies Lite” which people mostly buy on sale at $99.
Guess which one sells more copies. Come on, guess. Ready? Ladies Lite sells maybe 10% as many copies as the complete Ladies do. It’s crazy, right? I’m half tempted to pull the Lite version off the website, just so the Ladies page would be cleaner.
Mind you, Ladies Lite has significantly less content than the Complete Ladies, but it does include the most important articulations - The oo’s and ah’s (including legatos), which is the main thing people use the Ladies for. (Background harmonies.) So I would have expected the Lite version to be the bigger seller, but it isn’t. Part of this might be that the price difference between $99 and $199 (on sale) isn’t that big, whereas the Choir Complete/Lite price difference will be bigger. It’s all so complicated!
WHAT ABOUT MAYBE HAVING A TEASER VERSION?
So there will be a Complete version and Lite version, but with all these delays, we’re looking into doing a teaser version. Probably like 30 bucks, maybe limited to just the Oo vowel (the most commonly used vowel), along with some other things so the library would actually be useful, so people could see
why they might want a library like this. (Price would be applied to purchases of the Lite or Complete choir.)
I go back and forth on whether I think we should do this, though. It certainly wouldn’t be for the upfront money, because you can’t get rich selling 30 dollar libraries. (I learned that when we released RealiBanjo. Incredible quantity numbers … less incredible
total dollar numbers. Same lesson with RealiWhisle. Big seller, but it doesn’t move the bank account needle.)
So the real purpose would be to introduce the marketplace to what we’re working on, and maybe get some advance interest. (99% of our customer base has no idea we’re working on a choir.)
There are some downsides, though. It’s more work, obviously. As if we need more distractions on this project.
Another concern is I wonder about whether doing this could actually result in making less money overall. This is a crazy thought process, but hear me out on this.
There are a whole lot of people who don’t really use the libraries they buy. They like the
idea of having these libraries, and maybe playing a couple things when they first get it, but that initial dopamine rush is the real goal. (I’m guilty myself of this at times.)
So if there’s a $30 option where then can get that rush, and play with 2 Layers, and the Attacks/Releases, and a Repetitions articulation or two … they might not be craving the full fix. The newness is gone, so there’s not so much dopamine released in an upgrade purchase.
Or maybe I’m over-thinking it. (As I’m prone to do, as evidenced by this thread.) It’s at least a month or two before we can pull the trigger on doing that, anyway.
