> I tried this as an experiment to see if I wanted to order more music this way, but it only downloaded half the songs. Still a deal at 99cents, but not an experiment I’ll want to repeat with a full-price album.<p>This is "expanding the userbase", and seems overwhelmingly successful.<p>I've been thinking recently that "sales" (as in specials, temporary price reductions) are a socially acceptable way to do discriminatory pricing (different prices for different people).<p>You want to do this because some people are happy to pay more (so you want to charge the higher price), and some people will only buy at a lower price. If you price it high, you lose the low people; if you price it low, you can't charge the high people a high price. It makes sense to therefore have offer high prices to high people, and low prices to low people. But people hate this! Amazon actually tried it for a while, until it was noticed (maybe they still do, but in a less discernible way?)<p>A sale is a way to capture those low people, and only losing some high people. This is apart from getting them to be regular users.