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Subscription Hell

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Re: Subscription Hell

#411

Post by tdeck »

gkya wrote: post #154

> Today’s consumers though have significantly higher standards than the original users of the web. Consumers want immersive experiences, well-designed pages with fonts, graphics, photos, and videos coming together into a compelling format. Citation needed. This comes up quite often, and people like to assume they know what users want all the time. But is there actual, scientific evidence that, given the same content,…

Along the same lines, the article seems to be comparing the cost of serving plain text in 2001 to serving media in 2018. Even simple web hosting used to be much more expensive and difficult to set up.

Re: Subscription Hell

#412

Post by jonnycomputer »

At one time we complained about the fact that we couldn't pick and choose our subscriptions on cable tv. You got all the channels you didn't need, just so you could watch Cubs baseball. Now, that's not true. You can just subscribe to mlb tv (a pretty crappy product btw, despite my continued subscription to it).

the author just has trouble saying "no"

Re: Subscription Hell

#413

Post by jonnycomputer »

un-devmox wrote: post #181
DontGiveTwoFlux wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One con of the pay per article is that it siphons money into the money making kinds of stories. The sports and celebrity pages can do a lot of funding for the slow grind investigations that are important for holding those in power accountable. It’s not like an a la carte model couldn’t also fund profitless journalism, but I think it might push things even more in that direction. I think they do understand what people…

There's no reason why a publication can't charge more for an in-depth piece. I'd gladly pay far more for a comprehensive exposé.

or just read the other news paper's summary of it after an hour or two.

Re: Subscription Hell

#414

Post by lev99 »

xbkingx wrote: post #256
JauntTrooper wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that model will work, honestly. There's friction anytime you ask someone to spend anything, even if the price is de minimis. Look what happens whenever a city adopts a $0.05 plastic bag tax. When Washington DC did it, plastic bag use dropped by 50% - 70%. I'd see people that just spent $30 bucks at the store with their arms overflowing with stuff rather than pay that extra nickel. I'd expect prompting u…

And then you have those magical psychological effects at different price points. I remember when almost every piece of "shareware" was $20+ and most full "programs" were $100+. Now people balk at apps over $0.99 and even opt to have a ton of their personal information sent off to a stranger to avoid that price. The tone of the engagement matters, too, because it works on psychological levels most people aren't aware…

> Overall, though, I think the subscription model exists to take advantage of inattentive customers, which makes up the bulk of any user base.

This may be true for some services, but I don't think it's true of the most successful services. Think about Spotify and Netflix, most users are fully aware of their subscription.

Re: Subscription Hell

#415

Post by lajhsdfkl »

scarface74 wrote: post #404
lajhsdfkl wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Honestly, I don't think it would be a great loss to forgo most of the advertising funded content. Since you clearly haven't put much thought into this comment let's just start listing things that are funded by ads - News - content creators on youtube - music - twitch - search - blogs - websites with tutorials - a thousand different things which I have missed and then facebook, snapchat, instagram, and twitter which…

For tutorials, I pay $30 a month for a PluralSight subscription, $12-$20 for the occasional Udemy video and watch vendor supplied tutorials from Amazon and Microsoft. I hate ads for video content. I pay for Netflix and ad free Hulu. I use Plex for ad free content from CBS and the CW via by subscribing to the channels. It’s more ad blocking then piracy. Plex scrapes the content from the networks’ website real time and…

> For tutorials, I pay $30 a month for a PluralSight subscription, $12-$20 for the occasional Udemy video and watch vendor supplied tutorials from Amazon and Microsoft

Good for you that you can afford that. We all know the dream of the internet was information gated behind pay walls only accessible by the well off.

Re: Subscription Hell

#416

Post by Sylos »

lajhsdfkl wrote: post #184
Sylos wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, tracking is unethical, which most ads rely on. And yes, it is for their own good to not have thousands of databases with their data littered across the internet. I know, this is not a very American way of thinking, but no one can be an expert at everything. Most people are not experts at computers and even less can grasp the outreach and effects of their data being everywhere. These people need help just as much…

>And yes, it is for their own good to not have thousands of databases with their data littered across the internet. "With their data". Aka whether or not they liked a group pertaining to motorcycles or whether they searched for fishing rods on google. Yeah, we definitely need to shut off what is the most consumer friendly way of monetizing services in history so that a database of inane shit that is only relevant to…

Well, it's not only relevant to marketers. Your two most innocent examples are not the only type of information that's going to slip in there.

And even with those two examples, you just have to be creative to find ways for them to damage you:

You'll probably have to pay more for your health insurance, if they find out that you enjoy motorcycles.

And if your next potential employer is vegetarian, they might pass on you for fishing, a.k.a. killing things as a hobby.

Someone wanting to rob/extort/kidnap/murder you, might look for you at lonely lakes in the region.

And these are the most generic examples of this supposedly useless information being used against a person.

Someone who happens to have an actual use, is going to be even more creative, since they'll find themselves in some particular situation where it's useful.

And again, there's going to be more information. They can sift through an entire list to find the ones that are useful and they can combine multiple pieces of information, too.

Re: Subscription Hell

#417

Post by heartbreak »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #412

At one time we complained about the fact that we couldn't pick and choose our subscriptions on cable tv. You got all the channels you didn't need, just so you could watch Cubs baseball. Now, that's not true. You can just subscribe to mlb tv (a pretty crappy product btw, despite my continued subscription to it). the author just has trouble saying "no"

What world are you living in where the premiere live sports streaming service, the one that provides services for the likes of HBO Now and PS Vue is:

> a pretty crappy product btw

Re: Subscription Hell

#418

Post by robryan »

imh wrote: post #195
FPGAhacker wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moviepass is cratering. Why would you say they are successful? The are net negative on a per customer basis. They lost $150M last quarter. Their only positive income is investment rounds. Negative return on investment. It’s like subsidizing your company with credit cards. And having a business model of “apply for new credit cards”

Fair enough. The comment I was replying to was trying to make a point that consumers don't like a la cart models, so I think the consumer side of moviepass was the pertinent feature (they're wildly successful in terms of people loving it). It may suck for moviepass's finances, but as a consumer it's great and the $0 incremental cost has changed how I think about going to the movies. You could argue that the bulk of t…

You have to question a business model which only turns a profit when customers are paying for something they don't need. Unless they can negotiate favourable deals their only path to profitability is delivering no value to a high percentage of subscribers.

Re: Subscription Hell

#419

Post by jonnycomputer »

heartbreak wrote: post #417
jonnycomputer wrote: post #412

At one time we complained about the fact that we couldn't pick and choose our subscriptions on cable tv. You got all the channels you didn't need, just so you could watch Cubs baseball. Now, that's not true. You can just subscribe to mlb tv (a pretty crappy product btw, despite my continued subscription to it). the author just has trouble saying "no"

What world are you living in where the premiere live sports streaming service, the one that provides services for the likes of HBO Now and PS Vue is: > a pretty crappy product btw

MLB.tv/radio are crap services; their web apps and android apps are buggy memory hogs that frequently behave unpredictably, drop streams, or wig out; the service is also over-priced, blocks in-market games, and the package doesn't include the (what is it now, month-long) post-season, whle the post-season package is a bad joke (raw static camera feeds). I could go on.

IF it is the premier live sports streaming service (I wouldn't know, since I only follow baseball), then that speaks more to sad state of live sports streams.

Re: Subscription Hell

#420

Post by paulryanrogers »

3pt14159 wrote: post #315
always_good wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it works in software that many of us use every day. Once again, there's more nuance to making an argument than being able to point out a single absolute example. Why is this such popular rhetoric on HN? Especially in such a varied imprecise world of pricing structures? I use various bits of successful software like Transmit and Alfred that let you update until the next major version in which you must pay ag…

It "works" in the way that having insecure software on your computer "works" which is to say that it doesn't work, we just put up with computers where the non-technical don't know the mess they are in. Every major operating system (iOS, Android, Windows, QNX) or widely used software application (MS Office, any browser, any widely used app) issues emergency security patches. The reality is that having everyone on the…

There is a kind of perverse incentive not to work too hard to secure software when doing so removes a critical reason to buy the updates.

That being said I do think truly securing an application requires first having a secure platform. Otherwise users could indefinitely demand mitigations at the application layer until it contains most of its own OS.

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