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Who's doing this to my internet?

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Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#131

Post by at-fates-hands »

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.

You forgot this part as well:

I clicked on one song that I loved. It took me to Amazon, but the song wasn't available on MP3, only on Audio CD or Vinyl.

I immediately clicked away. I would gladly buy it on MP3 for 99 cents. But not wait for 2 days for a CD to ship.

Seriously? TWO DAYS. You can't wait TWO DAYS for your beloved music to arrive? This must be the pinnacle of someone with a low attention span. Ironic considering they painstakingly searched out each artist to buy their music, only to stop when they learn it will take two days to get it?

I just don't get any more.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#132

Post by XorNot »

sudoherethere wrote: post #72
vkb wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Digital compared to physical is no comparison at all. A physical shop incurs physical consequences - like people knowing where you are, where your address is, and being able to say "it was over there".

EDIT: And credit cards still require you to reasonably show the charges are fraudulent, which means hey, you get to report it. And now you're out a credit card, so you also need to change it on all the places you need to use it.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#134

Post by norea-armozel »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #90
norea-armozel wrote: post #85

I think the author doesn't realize that what's changed about the Internet isn't the technology. It's the people that changed. Today folks expect to get things for free with adverts. But now people don't want the adverts either so they use uBlock (I know I do). So, what's left for content and technology/service creators to do? I think micropayments would be a viable solution if a platform that's fairly secure and non-…

Except we tried micropayments about a bazillion times and they have universally failed. People don't want yet another monthly bill, which is what micropayments would be. You'd "subscribe" to various sites and services and it would eat at your bitcoin or whatever that you would need to replenish monthly. Ads aren't as terrible as the average INTJ male makes them out to be. They're trivial to block as well. The OP's po…

Honestly, I don't think the new services are a problem. They fill a niche in the market. Streaming services are for folks who don't want to manage their own media (physical or digital). Those folks prefer ownership of access over ownership of media itself. In itself it's fine as something to supplement a media library. But I don't believe most people realize that once access to the media is lost due to economic reasons (loss of job, service company goes bankrupt, and etc) that it's lost forever. Well as much as forever means in such a situation since you have to rebuild your entire playlist as it's not a standardized format from streaming service to streaming service (and I'm willing to bet it never will become standardized in any capacity). Either way, you pay a price. I still stand by my view that up front cost (direct ownership) is better than cost applied over time (ownership of access).

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#135

Post by Frondo »

yc1010 wrote: post #107
mcv wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is a better and safer online payment method its called Bitcoin But the existing financial and payment companies realize that this new technology makes them largely redundant hence they lobby and make it hard to acquire bitcoin for the average person with existing payment methods. The attitude of banks and regulators towards bitcoin is the same of the motor industry and governments towards the electric car, some…

People may also not like bitcoin because they want a democratic say in the design and operation of their currency. Bitcoin has economic features built into it that its users simply have no democratic redress to change, even if they wanted to. Power should be to the people, not some guy who likes deflation and baked that in years ago.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#136

Post by mratzloff »

jonstokes wrote: post #106

This article has made me realize that I'm about to start paying for sites to show me ads, and paying a lot. What do I mean? We just bought a gorgeous 15+ acre property outside of Austin with all kinds of outdoorsy stuff that I like -- horse barn, stocked pond, creek, salt water pool, woods with bike trails, etc. I've convinced my wife, a city girl, that we should all (we have three small kids) move out there and just…

> I'm happy to pay for your content. I'm not happy to pay for your ads. There has to be a better way.

Sorry, there's not. The vast majority of people are cheapskates.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#137

Post by ForHackernews »

[deleted] wrote: post #129

[deleted]

> "There have to be other business models that free up the internet for what it was meant for: free exchange of information.”

Do there? The internet began as a government- and academic-sponsored network. Even the worldwide web, you couldn't have a commercial website until 1993.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#138

Post by csense »

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.

This is why people need Bitcoin.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#139

Post by CrLf »

jamespo wrote: post #100
CrLf wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Often those other types of monetization boil down to someone else paying for it in one way or another.

Or you pay for it yourself but without the decision to specifically pay for _that_ content. I guess one heavy point of friction is having to decide to pay for something and not doing it because you either think it isn't worth it or the decision itself isn't worth it.

Bundling subscriptions and sharing revenue could be a way to do it. Not sure how that can be materialized in practice, though.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#140

Post by at-fates-hands »

[deleted] wrote: post #129

[deleted]

Serious question then - where do you trace this back to then? Companies abusing the freemium business model? Companies not having enough revenue to support their start-up?

Where do you think the internet started having to rely on advertising? I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it.

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