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Who's doing this to my internet?

veekaybee.github.io

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Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#71

Post by tacos »

2012? How about 1967, the year the 1-800 number was invented. The web is "free" because the other side is footing the bill.

Quick, review the Amazon S3 bandwidth pricing chart!

Now calculate how much bandwidth you're using via the idiotic model of copying the same song you're listening to ten times a day, ten times. Multiply that by ten hours or however long you're sitting there with headphones on taking money out of Fred Wilson's pocket while you pretend you're coding the next great site that's going to put money back into it.

Author states that SoundCloud is "made up mostly of music connoisseurs who would gladly pay for service." Ha!

The sad reality of the music business is that there's a very narrow age range when most people are "really into music" and it tends to correspond with a period of time when those people don't have very much money to spend.

Now that I have money to spend, I simply do not have time to waddle through the anti-curated wasteland that is SoundCloud. Slap enough ads on it (especially ones that directly get in the way of trying to discover something to listen to) and you've guaranteed I won't go there.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#72

Post by sudoherethere »

vkb wrote: post #51
Lazare wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Typin…

That is simply because most people have their credit card info saved in Amazon already. And people are lazy.

And yeah I would be reluctant to use my credit card on a shady looking website but I don't even think twice about using my card at shady looking businesses. For example, just last week, I bought tacos from a taco stand inside gas station.

Was site shady looking or just unknown? For me as long as site has valid certs & professional UI, I am usually fine with it. Also if you are using credit card, you are not liable for any fraudulent charges.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#73

Post by CrLf »

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…

"Here's a radical idea: pay for the services you love to use."

Here's another radical idea: trying to understand why people are unwilling to pay.

To me it's pretty obvious. People don't value those things they're supposed to "love" enough to pay for them. They don't actually "love" them, they're just induced necessities. If the whole Internet was turned into a pay-it-or-leave-it model, I wouldn't be surprised if most people just left it.

However, it this rare to see someone considering this possibility. It's much easier to discard users as being "cheap" or "freeloaders" than to think the all-so-important content on the Internet is just an extra on people's lives.

The article does make the point that other types of monetization besides ads or paywalls should be pursued.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#74

Post by icebraining »

pi-err wrote: post #35
DarkTree wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Or it says that there's an untapped opportunity for low friction, micro-transactions instead of "ads" or full-fledged purchases on unknown websites. It's clear by now that ads are for lazy. If your plan is to monetize your site with ads, today just like 10 years ago, you lost. Edit: surprised by the negativity on her reaction for _hacker_news. She's rebuffed by the $ and time investment for a single song ("unknown we…

The UX challenged has been solved, though; there are multiple well known websites selling music and which allow you to bundle all songs in a single order. You just can't force the artist to use them.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#76

Post by Buetol »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #47
Buetol wrote: 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'm just not following the connection from ads on the internet to a basic income. I've heard some good arguments for as well as against a basic income. I've never heard ads on the internet as one of them.

The connection is in the "why". Why do website switch to an ad-based revenue model ? (and so, against their initial will). Because the people running it needs money. If you have a basic income, it's easier for people to run websites for free without ads.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#77

Post by imauld »

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.

Agreed. God forbid a tiny independent site gain any traction.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#78

Post by imauld »

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.

Agreed. God forbid a tiny independent site gain some traction over Amazon or iTunes.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#79

Post by kjdal2001 »

I'm all for free and open internet, but that's free as in speech. A lot of this is complaining about how her favorite stuff on the internet is too expensive or supported by an ad model. Kind of sucks I guess, but hardly a travesty. Its entirely possible that her favorite web services had unsustainable financials back in 2012 and they are in the process of figuring out how to build a revenue stream to keep themselves going.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#80

Post by sirsuki »

Something that has always bothered me about advertisements isn't that companies are creating/using them it was that they actually work! The reason ads are everywhere is because they make money, LOTS of money. In 2010 it was estimated by "statista.com" (http://www.statista.com/statistics/237797/total-global-adver...) that the advertisement industry made 495 billion U.S. Dollars ranking it higher then Retail or Oil/Gas according to outdated "Wikipedia" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_r...). So my point is the crux of the problem is more to do with our (global) society then it does the evil plot of an industry. The best weapon against ads is to stop making them profitable. Bad flash or obnoxious java applets make money! Having a stupid mascot walk across the page offering to help makes money! Forcing people to watch and listen to ads just to see the cute kitten play with yarn makes money! Why wouldn't it be littered everywhere? Case in point: SPAM. That Viagra email poorly written and incorrectly translated actually makes the pharmaceutical companies money! Sad, real sad.
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