Pay-What-You-Want Music? No Joke.

The world was thrilled ten years ago when Apple introduced its iTunes model of cheap, downloadable music. The newest innovation? Pay whatever you wish to hear the tunes you want.

The website www.mavaru.com, co-founded by two Emory University grads Alex Lafley and Robeen Dey, aims to empower music fans by allowing them to choose the price of their music downloads. The site also liberates musicians by putting them directly in contact with their audience and providing a unique distribution platform.

The websites says, "Mavaru is an online music store where we think it’s presumptuous for us to tell you what music is worth. So you tell us. Want to support your favorite artists by paying import prices for their latest? Go right ahead. Want to try out a buzz band for just a dollar, or even nothing? Hey, we’ve been there—we don’t judge."

It's no secret that the concept of pay-what-you-want has been gaining traction recently, including a Panera store recently launched in Missouri, which opened up a pay-as-you-wish restaurant. Lafley and Dey demonstrated the Mavaru pay-on-your-honor concept at a music festival in Atlanta by offering hot dogs and grilled cheese sandwiches to festival-goers for whatever price they wanted to pay. The pair sold out repeatedly and made far more than if they'd sold it at a retail price.

The website is easy to navigate for both music buyers and music makers and markets all genres from indie and rap to hip-hop and pop. And, it offers artists 80 percent of each sale, less the transaction processing fee. The Mavaru music innovators mean what they say: your music, your price, no bull.

Photo by Khairil Zhafri via Flickr.