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Tell HN: Stripe killed my music locker service, so I'm open sourcing it

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Re: Tell HN: Stripe killed my music locker service, so I'm open sourcing it

#61

Post by evandale »

colesantiago wrote: post #56
evandale wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual questions you should ask in this situation are: How many people who use bitcoin would use this product? How many want to use this product and don't know how to use bitcoin? How many people CAN use bitcoin for THIS purchases? We're never going to switch to bitcoin for daily purchases but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be an option for people.

Because the answer is that nobody uses Bitcoin for anything legitimate other than speculation, paying off ransomware debts to criminals and just down right scams and fraud. I am yet to see any viable usecase of this bitcoin mania that is legitimate and doesn’t need tons of energy waste to accomplish its goal. For almost 15 years of bitcoin it has completely failed and we have no use for it. So yes, we should never sw…

That isn't true. I have a PornHub subscription that uses bitcoin. There's nothing speculative about it and it's completely legitimate. I've also used to to purchase indie games instead of giving Steam/Google/Apple/Epic a cut. I'm looking for a Spotify alternative and this seems to fit the bill and I'd give OP some bitcoin to check it out.

Just because viable usecases don't exist today isn't proof that they'll never exist and isn't a reason to stop development. If we gave up on hard problems because we didn't solve them in 15 years we wouldn't have the AI we have today.

Re: Tell HN: Stripe killed my music locker service, so I'm open sourcing it

#62

Post by grose »

ryanmcdonough wrote: post #55

"think Google Play Music, except we won't disappear. currently in early access." You can't just give up at the first sign of a payment issue, otherwise you're no better than google ;)

You're right :). Let's say inter.tube is not dead after all. I'll leave it up and try and figure something out. I'm willing to eat the charges while we figure it out (it's also very cheap to run -- I prioritized cheapness in the design).

Re: Tell HN: Stripe killed my music locker service, so I'm open sourcing it

#63

Post by pjc50 »

josephcsible wrote: post #25
pjc50 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not being advertised for or primarily used for copyright infringement.

Did you miss this sentence, or are you disagreeing with it? > According to Capitol Records, Inc. v. MP3Tunes, LLC, this is absolutely OK in the eyes of the law

What precisely does "this" refer to in that sentence?

https://casetext.com/case/capitol-records-inc-v-mp3tunes-llc

From a quick read of that, it appears that Mp3tunes lost the case, had a huge damages award made against them, as happens a lot, and the overall damages were deemed excessive and reduced to $750k.

Re: Tell HN: Stripe killed my music locker service, so I'm open sourcing it

#64

Post by viscountchocula »

tsuujin wrote: post #41
grose wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a shame that we have to complain on social media to get an actual human response to this kind of thing. If Stripe decides to reverse their decision, I'll leave it up, but it will remain open source.

When I was starting up a small business, Stripe decided that it needed to “verify my activity” or some such nonsense and withheld all of my payments for several weeks. Meaning that I could not pay my team. As far as I can tell, a client paid in a funky way that set off some automated system, and no real person was willing to work with me to get it resolved. I will never trust Stripe with my business again.

What does it mean to pay in a funky way?

Re: Tell HN: Stripe killed my music locker service, so I'm open sourcing it

#65

Post by danpalmer »

grose wrote: post #54
danpalmer wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some companies will proactively reach out, others need to be reached out to. It's possible this is too small, but then again many pre-revenue startups will get this sort of treatment so it's not just about money. The thing to remember is that Stripe (or your cloud provider, or your email sending provider, or any other SaaS) get something out of that relationship – they get a sales channel, they can trust you more, th…

Thanks, I agree... it was never intended to be a "real company", which was ultimately to my detriment. The irony of killing it hurts, so I'll probably just leave it up for the existing users, and (hopefully) find some other payment processor. It only costs me a few dollars per month to host it, so I am not super worried about the money, but it's a huge motivation killer to be ousted from Stripe. I was happy with keep…

Yeah it's tough. I'd love for hobby projects to be able to be sustainable like this, but I understand that taking money comes with so much regulation and auditing throughout the whole stack (KYC, credit card companies, taxes, etc), so I can see why it's not always viable.

Re: Tell HN: Stripe killed my music locker service, so I'm open sourcing it

#66

Post by thecosas »

evandale wrote: post #53
colesantiago wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Bitcoin will not help you here. At all.

It will help if you have a way to turn bitcoin into your preferred currency and vice versa. It's an option, not a complete replacement.

/s Helpfully, Stripe provides a path for exactly this https://stripe.com/docs/crypto/overview

Re: Tell HN: Stripe killed my music locker service, so I'm open sourcing it

#69

Post by jacquesm »

grose wrote: post #19
danpalmer wrote: post #12

Did you have a Stripe account manager? If so, get them on the case – they know you and can advocate for the business and explain the product internally. At the very least they might be able to give you a much more detailed explanation of which precise features are causing issue and how you could resolve those things. If not, why? Payments are a core part of any SaaS business, and it's important to have trust with imp…

I don't. My MRR is $5 currently, peaked at around $40. I'm far too small for Stripe to care about me. I was running this as a passion project. I'm not sure how to even get an account manager (does it just happen if you become big enough to matter?)

At an MRR like that I wonder why you even bother with the payment service. It seems like a giant barrier to entry if it isn't making money anyway. Or do you use it to limit the influx?

Re: Tell HN: Stripe killed my music locker service, so I'm open sourcing it

#70

Post by grose »

UPDATE 2: My Stripe account is back! Thank you so much! inter.tube will remain online, but open source from now on!

Update: I have reached out to the nice Stripe employee who volunteered their email, let's see what happens.

It's been pointed out a few times that my marketing says the site won't die, and me killing it would be very ironic. This is 100% true, and I have decided to leave the site up even if Stripe decides to ultimately close my account. Luckily, our infrastructure costs are very low (I created this site when Google Play Music went down and lots of people were complaining about Google killing yet another product. I don't want to do the same thing to my users.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to plug a similar service that I am completely unrelated to. I saw its author post on HN and they seem like they are also a one-man-shop: https://asti.ga This service is different in that it lets you hook it up to your own cloud storage. I am only now realizing why this is such a brilliant idea.

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