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Who's doing this to my internet?

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Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#51

Post by vkb »

Lazare wrote: post #45
vkb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is chiming in on this point, so I don't think I wrote it clearly enough. I would be willing to pay $1.50 for a song if it were through a known party, like Amazon Payments or PayPal. I've bought lots of music through Amazon. I'm not going to risk $1.50 to an unknown website. Additionally, my expectations as a consumer have been set to pay 99 cents per track, so to me, in the current atmosphere, $1.50 seems li…

If you don't mind sharing (and if you still recall) what was the payment service they were using?

It was via credit card, but it was a smaller site I'd never heard of (I'm into music but not enough to know this place..maybe they're legit and I just didn't spend enough time doing research) and I was weighing the responsibility of thanking the artist the cost of buying a single track on a fairly "random" site and watching my credit card like a hawk for a month. It wasn't worth it to me in the end, ultimately. Typing this out, it seems a bit harsh, but I think a lot of consumers go through this same mental process. When I wrote an ebook, I put it both on Amazon and through a Shopify-type store where people could buy the DRM-free version. 99% of those people chose Amazon, and with good reason.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#52

Post by golergka »

Users.

Users always talk that they would love to pay. The problem is, they never do. They blog and write on forums about what they would like to see, but the things they write are always very, very different from what they actually do, according to the data.

You remember how in this whole Reddit debacle Pao said that "most of users don't really care about this scandal" and got downvoted to hell? It could very well be true, but users who were constantly around subreddits that were involved in the drama couldn't believe it. They are sure that evil corporate suits are out of touch with reality because they "don't even use their own service" and consume the information in form of PowerPoint presentations. But those suits are very well in touch with reality — it is a couple of SQL queries away from them, actually. (And I see that "managers" are getting more and more literate in terms of analytics, by the way — SQL and R aren't really that hard, and often you have much more user-friendly analytic services at your hands).

I'm not saying that big websites don't do bullshit. Of course they do. But when they do something that users actually don't like, users punish them in the most harsh way possible: with their wallets. Don't you remember how internet used to be? The hundreds of popups, for example — turns out, users didn't like it enough to install Firefox, so these guys went out of business. I could recall more examples like this, but this comment is already too wordy; you get the picture.

If you want to stop Buzzfeed, don't click clickbait and shame (in a constructive way — without calling them idiots, but making them feel a little bit low-brow, basic manipulation isn't that hard) your facebook friends for reposting such bullshit. And if you won't succeed, you'll just have to face the reality of being one in several billions.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#53

Post by chasing »

> "Who is doing this to my internet?"

We all are. It costs money to create, host, and distribute content. We've demonstrated our unwillingness to pay a proper amount for it. (For example: "I would gladly buy it on MP3 for 99 cents... $1.50 is a lot to pay for a song...") And so companies that do this stuff have to get creative about making money. And advertising does the job.

The solution is to pay much more money for the content that you now get for free.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#55

Post by grokas »

dmschulman wrote: post #29

Here's a radical idea: pay for the services you love to use. The author mentions she pays for an NYTimes subscription presumably because she gets a lot of value from their content. I pony up the same for a handful of websites and services that I choose to support. It's certainly not a democracy but there is some logic to "voting with your wallet". I hate ads as much as the next person but one thing I hate even more i…

| "Voting with your wallet"

Oddly enough thats exactly how our 'democracy' works... what would it be without political donations?

Back to the point though, if you want to make something free forever, buy it outright one time and its yours for the keeping... Subscription services like buying a car then going to TitleMax and giving them the title, wait for them to take your car away when you can't pay.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#56

Post by ericson578 »

I think the revolution that will allow unfettered exchange of ideas will be peer-to-peer microtransactions. Maybe some combination of bitcoin + tor + some yet to be created tech.

All of the corporate sites are going to devolve into corporate friendly zones soon enough.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#57

Post by normloman »

I agree with what's been said here about payment. It is hypocritical that the author want's ad free music, but won't pay a buck and a half for a track. That said, the ad supported web still has problems, and I don't see anyone trying to solve it. Subscriptions are great, but how do we get people like the author of this post to buy into them? What's a fair way to charge subscriptions? How do you balance getting paid with keeping your content searchable? We shouldn't stop looking for new business models.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#60

Post by dkuntz2 »

deanCommie wrote: post #13
icebraining wrote: post #7

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?

I think more popular songs are going for $1.29.
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