What's it worth to you?

I went to Girl Talk's website today and was checking out his discography. I knew that he had produced more albums (four) than I owned (two), but I couldn't remember why I hadn't downloaded them as I had the two that I did own.

Side note: For those of you who do not know Girl Talk, he is DJ that produces long, continuous mash-ups. Since he does not own the materials that he uses, he cannot charge money for his work. If you would like to know more about this topic, see Creative Commons - Attribution-Noncommercial.

So, I went to download the other two albums he released and found that they were not available for free download. Confused, I clicked "add to cart" to see how much the CDs cost. At this point I was given three options: mp3 format, FLAC, or CD+download. I was also given the choice of how much I would like to pay for the each type of file.

This may not be a new concept to some of you (Radiohead did it with the album In Rainbows), but I have never seen this before today. Let me just tell you: I love the idea of "Pay us however much you think it's worth." WHAT! Yes. Whereas before I would have preferred to get the albums for free, I respect this idea so much that I am willing, scratch that, want to pay for these albums.

Perhaps it is because I am no longer required to pay a certain amount that I am now willing to buy it. Perhaps it is because the artist isn't putting a value or worth on the material, and I am able to determine it's worth on my own. Perhaps it's because I can get three albums for a dollar.

Either way, I love this concept and I seriously hope that the rest of the music industry follows suit. If that is the case, I guarantee you that I will stop mooching music off of friends and start paying for it. Do you hear that, corporate america? I guarantee I will pay for it. Make it happen.