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Who's doing this to my internet?

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Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#111

Post by 6stringmerc »

onion2k wrote: post #39
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…

Do I get the MP3 to keep forever if I pay? Most times, no. Is that really the case? Most vendors selling MP3 format music are DRM-free.

Good point. I routinely pay $2.49 per track over at Beatport for DRM free 320 kbps quality. Can I find the same music on iTunes or Amazon? Sometimes, but there's a premium that Beatport can demand through having exclusive / niche content, which seems lost in the context of this discusstion (more or less).

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#112

Post by romaniv »

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.

How much money does one song really makes through ads per person? I don't think it's anywhere close to $1.50.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#113

Post by pi-err »

icebraining wrote: post #74
pi-err wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes and no - streaming and iTunes are pretty good for most things "mainstream" music. Soundcloud though: there's no excuse for them at least not to _try_. Just like for her, ads and passive aggressive song selection are killing the experience.

Then for content at large, there's pretty much everything to do. Not surprised if Stripe and ApplePay, both focused on this micro-amount market, take it all.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#114

Post by golergka »

davedx wrote: post #88
golergka wrote: post #52

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…

> 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. That's because content providers make it fucking impossible to buy their content a lot of the time! I've been looking into this here (the Netherlands) for the last 12 months or so. It is so incredibly hard to go into a pay-per-view movie servic…

> I'm currently working at a cable TV company

Look at netflix share prices. Then look at your cable company's. Then look back at netflix. It's on a horse. (OK, the pun is stupid, sorry).

I don't pretend that it's all rainbows and butterflies. It sucks a lot of the time, and I share your pain. My point is, that on a large scale, industry does move when users want it to be. Slowly, painfully, but this is happening.

Compare today with 10 years ago. It is a more appropriate time frame to evaluate change in such gigantic industries. Did you try to buy games online then? Movies? Music? How was your user experience? iTunes fails me often (and as a DJ who uses it for library management, it hurst a lot), but the ability to hear song on the radio and buy it in scope of 20 seconds is awesome. Or, nowadays, just add it to my library without actually buying and evaluate whether I should buy it later at home.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#115

Post by beagle3 »

vkb wrote: post #26
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.

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…

> I'm not going to risk $1.50 to an unknown website.

Is that really what you wanted to say?

Because before you wrote this, I was under the impression that you don't want to risk your credit card details (and therefore risk the overhead that fraud or a hack on that site would cause you). But the if the problem is a whole $1.50, then I simply don't understand what difference the counterparty in this transaction makes.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#116

Post by sillygeese »

alistairSH wrote: post #98
sillygeese wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not going to risk $1.50 to an unknown website. $1.50 isn't much of a risk you know, even if you don't know the website. You'd probably even get the song! Also, if a song is on Audio CD, it's probably on iTunes too. > in the current atmosphere, $1.50 seems like it's too much This makes no sense. If you're a true music lover, a great song will give you countless hours of enjoyment and appreciation. Do you serious…

I don't think it's a problem with $1.50 in absolute terms. It's $1.50 compared to $0.99 from other vendors. Artists have set the expectation that songs are worth $0.99 by selling them for that amount elsewhere. FWIW, I don't buy a lot of music - I use free Pandora and put up with the ads.

> I don't think it's a problem with $1.50 in absolute terms. It's $1.50 compared to $0.99 from other vendors.

Yes, but if you only have the $1.50 option for buying a song you supposedly love, it simply makes no sense to refuse because other places sell other songs for $0.99, especially considering the massive value for a measly amount of money you get either way.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#117

Post by sillygeese »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #94
sillygeese wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not going to risk $1.50 to an unknown website. $1.50 isn't much of a risk you know, even if you don't know the website. You'd probably even get the song! Also, if a song is on Audio CD, it's probably on iTunes too. > in the current atmosphere, $1.50 seems like it's too much This makes no sense. If you're a true music lover, a great song will give you countless hours of enjoyment and appreciation. Do you serious…

> $1.50 isn't much of a risk you know, even if you don't know the website. You'd probably even get the song! The $1.50 itself isn't the risk, it's how you pay for it - by entering your card details you let them charge you whatever they want whenever they want

They just might accept PayPal though.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#118

Post by freehunter »

Steuard wrote: post #43
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.

The part that stuck out to me was when the author talked about her desire to have a long-term archive of her favorite music, but wasn't willing to "wait for 2 days for a CD to ship". I can understand not wanting to deal with CDs or not wanting to spend money on less-favorite songs on the album, but focusing on the delay just doesn't click for me.

If the only way you could get to Hacker News was over a dial-up connection, would you switch to dial-up or would you just go to a different site that loads a broadband speed?

Waiting two days to then have to deal with the unpleasant experience of getting a physical CD sucks. Wait two days, then rip the CD, then move the file to your phone... or just find other music you like that can be immediately downloaded. I love music but there are very few individual songs I would do that for.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#119

Post by msluyter »

There should be a name for this phenomenon. It appears that any service that attempts to remain un-gated eventually will be forced to run ads in order to stay afloat. The ads become more prevalent over time, until an equilibrium is reached. The service is now barely tolerable, with just a high enough content/ad ratio to keep you around but not high enough that the experience is actually pleasant. Say, Pandora, for example. Call it "the dismal equilibrium" or something.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#120

Post by SolarUpNote »

If paywalls don't work, and ads don't work, some kind of metered-browsing would be a solution. It's so far away from happening, it's hardly worth discussing, but imagine this:

* let's say soundcloud could charge $.0001 (or something) for every pageview (or play, or some other interaction that the website chooses)

* this fee is mostly transparent to the user, they've signed up once, and have access to all metered sites

* the user would deposit money in an account ahead of time to use for the metered sites

* the metering could be built-in to web browsers to display when you're on a metered site using a standard graphic (like how the lock is a standard symbol for a secure connection)

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