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Who's doing this to my internet?

veekaybee.github.io

11–20 of 306 posts

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#11
How can a web site survive without ads? You can charge a subscription fee, but many users who would tolerate ads will just leave when faced with a paywall. You can ask for donations. Or you can run the site as cheaply as possible and try to support it out of your own pocket.

Given these alternatives, it's easy to see why people support their site with ads. So how can we make these alternatives more attractive? Or is there some other way for web sites to survive?

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#12

Another song I loved by an artist I loved was available for sale, but on a tiny third-party music distribution site I'd never heard of, and for $1.50. $1.50 is a lot to pay for a song And then OP wonders why everyone is making free services plastered with ads instead of charging.

Exactly. What I took away from this article is that, despite everyone being frustrated by the inoculation of ads into our beloved 'free' services, we are still not frustrated enough to actually pay the premium to eliminate these annoyances. It's the old cliche, "you can't have your cake and eat it too".

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#13

Another song I loved by an artist I loved was available for sale, but on a tiny third-party music distribution site I'd never heard of, and for $1.50. $1.50 is a lot to pay for a song And then OP wonders why everyone is making free services plastered with ads instead of charging.

And since when is $1.50 "a lot" to pay for a song when the standard going rate for a song on iTune is 99cents?

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#14
post #5

Really enjoyed this post, but I think some of her thoughts point to the root of the problem. > I started by trying to buy each of them separately. > $1.50 is a lot to pay for a song So she wanted to compensate each artist for the songs she loved, but only at an amount of her choosing? I'm assuming she was expecting 99 cents, so we're essentially haggling over $0.50 here. This shows why the advertising model is so pre…

The credit card situation is a completely separate concern, but a very big one. I still don't understand why there's no better international online payment method. There's a great Dutch online payment method, but that's only used by Dutch sites and a few really big ones (like Steam) that can afford to implement national payment systems.

Why that system hasn't been implemented on a larger scale, I still don't know.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#15
post #11

How can a web site survive without ads? You can charge a subscription fee, but many users who would tolerate ads will just leave when faced with a paywall. You can ask for donations. Or you can run the site as cheaply as possible and try to support it out of your own pocket. Given these alternatives, it's easy to see why people support their site with ads. So how can we make these alternatives more attractive? Or is…

You don't have to have a single solution. You can do "freemium": free with ads, premium without ads. Everybody gets what they want, though it is a bit of extra work.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#16

Another song I loved by an artist I loved was available for sale, but on a tiny third-party music distribution site I'd never heard of, and for $1.50. $1.50 is a lot to pay for a song And then OP wonders why everyone is making free services plastered with ads instead of charging.

A 45 RPM single in 1962 was $1.00. That would be $5.60 adjusted for inflation today.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#18
post #14
post #5

Really enjoyed this post, but I think some of her thoughts point to the root of the problem. > I started by trying to buy each of them separately. > $1.50 is a lot to pay for a song So she wanted to compensate each artist for the songs she loved, but only at an amount of her choosing? I'm assuming she was expecting 99 cents, so we're essentially haggling over $0.50 here. This shows why the advertising model is so pre…

The credit card situation is a completely separate concern, but a very big one. I still don't understand why there's no better international online payment method. There's a great Dutch online payment method, but that's only used by Dutch sites and a few really big ones (like Steam) that can afford to implement national payment systems. Why that system hasn't been implemented on a larger scale, I still don't know.

My bank offers free Virtual Credit Cards with a configurable limit. I've heard that some US banks (BofA?) do as well. That limits the exposure to the amount of the payment. And you can still chargeback.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#19
post #8
post #2

Basically, a basic income would solve this since people are doing it because they need money to survive. Sometimes I think that money is corrupting everything and in the future it will be seen as an aberration. Hard to tell. EDIT: It's not money directly than corrupts human to do not do the right things. It's forcing people the earn money to survive.

I don't think this is being done for survival; I think it's being done because it can be done and it's asymmetrically lucrative. Petty theft of a jar of peanut butter may well be solved by a basic income. Ad-free internet business models will not be created by a basic income.

Sure, but with a basic income, it would be easier to run a site like SoundCloud without ads. You could switch to an alternative site once SoundCloud started pushing ads.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#20
I vehemently disagree with the authors taste in music, but she makes some good points. Soundcloud is just a platform though, and if you live by the sword of constantly available unlimited new content all the time then you kind of have to die by it, too. Content producers change styles to chase trends, tracks get taken down and everything changes when more money and popularity is involved. Enjoy free online content for what it is, but support a scene by buying releases/merch, going to events and spreading the word - it wont implode just because soundcloud changes.
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