9 ms·

I see this clearly with all platforms now asking for some monetization (more than before): Where I live: - Spotify is 10€/month - Netflix is 10€/month - Ama

by kuu 6y ago

I see this clearly with all platforms now asking for some monetization (more than before): Where I live: - Spotify is 10€/month - Netflix is 10€/month - Amazon is 30-40€ year (just Prime; primevideo+ or whatever is called, is even 5€/month more) - Disney+ 10€/month - Youtube Premium x€/month - PSN plus / Xbox gamepass / Nintendo online x€/month - Twitch subscriptions 5€/month - Youtube subscriptions x€/month - Patreons x€/month - Podcasts x€/month How much am I willing to spend on entertainment per month? At the end I have to choose, so PSN may be competing with Spotify or some Patreon with Disney+.... Interesting to see this is happening and this was already happening before...

mrkwse 6y ago
This really resonates with me. I realise a lot of people will pay for individual Twitch subscriptions, YouTube memberships, and Patreon memberships, but it can be quite a hard sell in comparison to some of the things you list above. I wish there was a better funding model as those creators. I'd like to direct more money to that category of creator. However paying one person (or team of people) around as much a year as I pay for my TV Licence just cannot compare in terms of value to me as a consumer. YouTube Premium is apparently a reasonable compromise from what I've seen some channels report (a decent bump in income for them for each premium view and for the end-user a decent enhancement in experience across the platform), but I wish there was a similar scheme for more niche web/news publications (Apple News+ looks reasonable, but has a limited catalogue in the UK).
- pas 6y ago
  Direct donations? Even if they are more hassle than paying ~1-5 USD/mo on Patreon, it likely has a much greater impact on the creator.
  - trash3 6y ago
    For Patreon, probably. But it's not so clear for twitch subs since Bezos gets his cut and they get a bump in the twitch algos.
- 0-_-0 6y ago
  Maybe something like an attention based token built into the browser which automatically distributes a fixed amount of money each month to creators that you watched that month. This is already implemented in the Brave browser. Maybe you could simulate subscriptions based on the token being active in a browser or not. E.g. someone can read a paywalled article if they have at least $10 a month distributed such a way (in proportion to attention).
- OzzyB 6y ago
  The better model for Creators isn't subscriptions but SuperChats, it's the digital version of "don't buy the CD, buy the concert". It's quite common to see people drop $20 for their favorite Creator to read out their comments. It's fun and provides that direct/live link that fans crave. This provides a unique monetization channel that's not available to regular businesses while helping Creators circumvent the pervasive "why should I give you $10/month if Spotify is $10/month" narrative.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    That doesn't solve the absolutely fundamental unsolvable problem that digital has marginal cost so you make 0.01x revenue if you have .01x the audience.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    honestly I find this kinda gross. it feels a little too close to tossing bills around in a strip club. it's not so bad on music streams (eg, here's $5 to play my song), but I also watch a stream where a law student breaks analyzes current events. it's quite incongruous when they stop explaining the legal nuances to read some inane donation message out loud.
    - ajuc 6y ago
      Well it's a business model most artist used for centuries before recording and mass production was possible. Busking is still using it to this day. I find nothing gross in it, it's actually better in many ways because you have immediate feedback so you can develop quicker (whether you want to develop in a particular direction your current audience wants is another matter).
      - leetcrew 6y ago
        maybe this wasn't clear, but I was referring to a live performer with "music streams". donating to make a song request doesn't have that gross feel. it's mainly the paying just to have your comment read that seems weird to me. in the first case you're paying for a performance; in the second, you are basically just paying for a human's attention.
- iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
  I would really like a system where by a seller wants to make $X/m and so sells their service at a base price of $Y/m. When they have enough customers (C) such that X/C < Y, the price (Y) for all customers drops so that Y = X/C. Obviously, as they gain more customers they may need to increase X to pay for resources or staff which would increase the price.
- thesuitonym 6y ago
  Something like Nebula, a group of YouTube creators coming together with their own service that costs less than Netflix, but subsidizes their content. It's mostly education/engineering/science based creators, but it seems to be a decent model.
- johncalvinyoung 6y ago
  I read longform articles and journalism voraciously. When I'm not pulling overtime at work, I usually read 20-50 in-depth articles a day. But the challenge is how widely I read. Sure, there's a bunch at NYT (which I subscribe to), and a bunch at open-access blogs and journals around the net, but the middle are tough. I might normally want to read, over the course of a month, 10-15 articles from each of 15 different paywalled magazines or newspapers. Which is more than the 2-5 free articles typically allowed past their paywalls, but little enough (especially compared to 15 or more competitors) to justify $15-25+ a month per source. Maybe if I was a Wall Street trader the WSJ and Bloomberg are no-brainer expenses, but right now I wouldn't get enough value from them to justify their sky-high subscription costs, but I would like to read a decent handful of articles a month. A few publishers, like NYT or WP, have picked up on this market, and regularly discount to capture various price points, but lots have held onto a 'big subscription or none' model. What I really want is an (expensive) subscription to something like Spotify Premium across publishers. I'd happily fund the pool to the tune of $50-100 a month, if it could get me access to my top 15-25 paywalls. Everyone gets some, some get close to standard subscription rates, but it'd just enable me not to have to worry about whether I've used up my free articles for the month at each origin. And it'd also let me contribute to lots of magazines and things I do appreciate, just not $25/mo appreciation.
wodenokoto 6y ago
> At the end I have to choose, so PSN may be competing with Spotify or some Patreon with Disney+... Wasn't it during the PS2 launch, that Sony said "A girlfriend" when asked what they considered their biggest competitor?
pas 6y ago
Patreon seems to be the best bang for the buck, because there you have the most control about what you fund. Spotify is basically a RIAA subscription with added steps. Netflix subscription is a subsidy for series/movie production houses. One's personal cashflow toward Amazon has less actual influence on what the Jeff channel will air than the Utah monolith's stolen shadow. ... that said, so far this seems like an improvement over Big TV. Though, maybe it's just the YouTube addiction talking.
efsavage 6y ago
I have a baseline expected cost for passive entertainment at probably about $2-3/hour and judge things based on that whether to keep it when I see the charge show up on my bill. Some services I have kept for years, others I've started/cancelled several times, many I get some enjoyment from and then move on. If you aren't afraid to cancel things, and don't sign up for things you can't cancel, I think it's a fairly efficient system that can align your money and time.
moooo99 6y ago
As for Netflix I found a great alternative. Many people are selling their DVD/BluRay collections on eBay as bundles. With the rise of streaming services, there is usually not a whole lot of competition on these auctions. I somehow managed to get 30 pretty decent movies/series on DVD and 20 on BluRay for 25€ including shipping. Sure, these are usually not very new movies, but I like to watch older movies and its a lot better than subscribing to dozens of streaming services just to watch one specific movie. As for comfort, sure DVDs are not as comfortable as clicking on Netflix, but if you have a decent NAS at home anyways, Plex still makes a great experience.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  Or just engage in piracy.
  - TonyTrapp 6y ago
    Buying a used CD/DVD is usually less work, safer and costs next to nothing. Discogs is great for music CDs in particular.
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      Less work? It is trivial to do, trivial to do untraceably, and costs literally nothing.
      - lwhalen 6y ago
        $30/yr for a VPN service so your isp doesn't disconnect you for torrenting, at least in the US
        Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
        So 2 months of Netflix?
        whimsicalism 6y ago
loughnane 6y ago
A year or so ago reed Hastings made this point on an earnings G s call when he said that fortnite was their biggest threat. Same point
st1x7 6y ago
Many of these are either optional or compete with one or more of the other services. Podcasts are either completely free or they should go under Spotify/Patreon. Twitch/Youtube subscriptions and Patreon are entirely optional. And I don't see how you can justify both Youtube Premium and Spotify at the same time or all three of Netflix/Disney+/Prime - I just wouldn't have the time to make any use of all these subscriptions in a month.
- wlesieutre 6y ago
  Individual podcast creators might be via Patreon, but larger podcast networks can and do have their own donation systems. Same principle and probably a similar amount of money, they just aggregate it between multiple shows and don't want to pay a cut to Patreon. I know Relay.fm and Radiotopia are both set up for that, presumably there are others.
- kuu 6y ago
  All of them are optional as you don't need any of those. The thing is that at the end you have to choose, of course some combinations are better/make more sense than others, I'm not saying you should have any.
  - st1x7 6y ago
    By optional I meant that you can use the service with or without paying. (Example: donating to Patreon or subbing on Twitch is optional; paying for Netflix isn't optional since you have to pay in order to watch anything on Netflix). Obviously using any of them in the first place is optional too.
- dcolkitt 6y ago
  We subscribe to all of those things. Netflix as the primary streaming service. Disney+ because the kids love Frozen. Youtube so the kids don't get blasted by ads on their iPads. Spotify because it's the only real music streaming option. And Amazon Prime, not for entertainment but 2-day shipping and free grocery delivery. You're talking about $52 a month. For easily 20+ hours of entertainment (or time savings in terms of Amazon Prime). In terms of quality of life, it's much more impactful than say upgrading from a Subaru to a Mercedes. Despite costing an order of magnitude less.
TruthHurts44 6y ago
one word - torrents.
- artvark11 6y ago
  Torrents are great for previewing content but remember to financially support those that you enjoy.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  They seem to have fallen out of favor with the general public.
  - TruthHurts44 6y ago
    The general public became too computer literate to use them and the paid services are really really easy to use.
    - bonoboTP 6y ago
      Being from Eastern Europe I can assure you, people lose all their learned helplessness surrounding technical stuff and become proficient torrent users if that's what separates them from their favorite movies and TV series and music. People are "computer illiterate" when they dont care, are lazy or think they can make someone else do the work instead of them.
- nicbou 6y ago
  Well yes, "don't pay for things" is one way to save money.
vangelis 6y ago
Maybe if there was some sort of service that bundled all these together for one monthly fee.
rmah 6y ago
Many decades ago, when I was a young adult, I probably spent around $30 a month purchasing music (CD's and, before that, vinyl records), $30 a month on newspapers, $30 on magazines, another $40 a month on books, $20 a month on cable TV and maybe another $30 month on video movie theaters/VCR/DVD/rentals. All up, around $150 to $200 a month on various entertainment media. With inflation, that's probably $300 or $400 a month these days. For my income range, this was not at all extreme. For this, I got much much less than what you can get for $300 a month these days.

by kuu 6y ago

mrkwse 6y ago

This really resonates with me. I realise a lot of people will pay for individual Twitch subscriptions, YouTube memberships, and Patreon memberships, but it can be quite a hard sell in comparison to some of the things you list above. I wish there was a better funding model as those creators. I'd like to direct more money to that category of creator. However paying one person (or team of people) around as much a year as I pay for my TV Licence just cannot compare in terms of value to me as a consumer. YouTube Premium is apparently a reasonable compromise from what I've seen some channels report (a decent bump in income for them for each premium view and for the end-user a decent enhancement in experience across the platform), but I wish there was a similar scheme for more niche web/news publications (Apple News+ looks reasonable, but has a limited catalogue in the UK).

pas 6y ago
Direct donations? Even if they are more hassle than paying ~1-5 USD/mo on Patreon, it likely has a much greater impact on the creator.
- trash3 6y ago
  For Patreon, probably. But it's not so clear for twitch subs since Bezos gets his cut and they get a bump in the twitch algos.
0-_-0 6y ago
Maybe something like an attention based token built into the browser which automatically distributes a fixed amount of money each month to creators that you watched that month. This is already implemented in the Brave browser. Maybe you could simulate subscriptions based on the token being active in a browser or not. E.g. someone can read a paywalled article if they have at least $10 a month distributed such a way (in proportion to attention).
OzzyB 6y ago
The better model for Creators isn't subscriptions but SuperChats, it's the digital version of "don't buy the CD, buy the concert". It's quite common to see people drop $20 for their favorite Creator to read out their comments. It's fun and provides that direct/live link that fans crave. This provides a unique monetization channel that's not available to regular businesses while helping Creators circumvent the pervasive "why should I give you $10/month if Spotify is $10/month" narrative.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  That doesn't solve the absolutely fundamental unsolvable problem that digital has marginal cost so you make 0.01x revenue if you have .01x the audience.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  honestly I find this kinda gross. it feels a little too close to tossing bills around in a strip club. it's not so bad on music streams (eg, here's $5 to play my song), but I also watch a stream where a law student breaks analyzes current events. it's quite incongruous when they stop explaining the legal nuances to read some inane donation message out loud.
  - ajuc 6y ago
    Well it's a business model most artist used for centuries before recording and mass production was possible. Busking is still using it to this day. I find nothing gross in it, it's actually better in many ways because you have immediate feedback so you can develop quicker (whether you want to develop in a particular direction your current audience wants is another matter).
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      maybe this wasn't clear, but I was referring to a live performer with "music streams". donating to make a song request doesn't have that gross feel. it's mainly the paying just to have your comment read that seems weird to me. in the first case you're paying for a performance; in the second, you are basically just paying for a human's attention.
iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
I would really like a system where by a seller wants to make $X/m and so sells their service at a base price of $Y/m. When they have enough customers (C) such that X/C < Y, the price (Y) for all customers drops so that Y = X/C. Obviously, as they gain more customers they may need to increase X to pay for resources or staff which would increase the price.
thesuitonym 6y ago
Something like Nebula, a group of YouTube creators coming together with their own service that costs less than Netflix, but subsidizes their content. It's mostly education/engineering/science based creators, but it seems to be a decent model.
johncalvinyoung 6y ago
I read longform articles and journalism voraciously. When I'm not pulling overtime at work, I usually read 20-50 in-depth articles a day. But the challenge is how widely I read. Sure, there's a bunch at NYT (which I subscribe to), and a bunch at open-access blogs and journals around the net, but the middle are tough. I might normally want to read, over the course of a month, 10-15 articles from each of 15 different paywalled magazines or newspapers. Which is more than the 2-5 free articles typically allowed past their paywalls, but little enough (especially compared to 15 or more competitors) to justify $15-25+ a month per source. Maybe if I was a Wall Street trader the WSJ and Bloomberg are no-brainer expenses, but right now I wouldn't get enough value from them to justify their sky-high subscription costs, but I would like to read a decent handful of articles a month. A few publishers, like NYT or WP, have picked up on this market, and regularly discount to capture various price points, but lots have held onto a 'big subscription or none' model. What I really want is an (expensive) subscription to something like Spotify Premium across publishers. I'd happily fund the pool to the tune of $50-100 a month, if it could get me access to my top 15-25 paywalls. Everyone gets some, some get close to standard subscription rates, but it'd just enable me not to have to worry about whether I've used up my free articles for the month at each origin. And it'd also let me contribute to lots of magazines and things I do appreciate, just not $25/mo appreciation.

wodenokoto 6y ago

> At the end I have to choose, so PSN may be competing with Spotify or some Patreon with Disney+... Wasn't it during the PS2 launch, that Sony said "A girlfriend" when asked what they considered their biggest competitor?

pas 6y ago

Patreon seems to be the best bang for the buck, because there you have the most control about what you fund. Spotify is basically a RIAA subscription with added steps. Netflix subscription is a subsidy for series/movie production houses. One's personal cashflow toward Amazon has less actual influence on what the Jeff channel will air than the Utah monolith's stolen shadow. ... that said, so far this seems like an improvement over Big TV. Though, maybe it's just the YouTube addiction talking.

efsavage 6y ago

I have a baseline expected cost for passive entertainment at probably about $2-3/hour and judge things based on that whether to keep it when I see the charge show up on my bill. Some services I have kept for years, others I've started/cancelled several times, many I get some enjoyment from and then move on. If you aren't afraid to cancel things, and don't sign up for things you can't cancel, I think it's a fairly efficient system that can align your money and time.

moooo99 6y ago

As for Netflix I found a great alternative. Many people are selling their DVD/BluRay collections on eBay as bundles. With the rise of streaming services, there is usually not a whole lot of competition on these auctions. I somehow managed to get 30 pretty decent movies/series on DVD and 20 on BluRay for 25€ including shipping. Sure, these are usually not very new movies, but I like to watch older movies and its a lot better than subscribing to dozens of streaming services just to watch one specific movie. As for comfort, sure DVDs are not as comfortable as clicking on Netflix, but if you have a decent NAS at home anyways, Plex still makes a great experience.

whimsicalism 6y ago
Or just engage in piracy.
- TonyTrapp 6y ago
  Buying a used CD/DVD is usually less work, safer and costs next to nothing. Discogs is great for music CDs in particular.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    Less work? It is trivial to do, trivial to do untraceably, and costs literally nothing.
    - lwhalen 6y ago
      $30/yr for a VPN service so your isp doesn't disconnect you for torrenting, at least in the US
      - Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
        So 2 months of Netflix?
      - whimsicalism 6y ago

loughnane 6y ago

A year or so ago reed Hastings made this point on an earnings G s call when he said that fortnite was their biggest threat. Same point

st1x7 6y ago

Many of these are either optional or compete with one or more of the other services. Podcasts are either completely free or they should go under Spotify/Patreon. Twitch/Youtube subscriptions and Patreon are entirely optional. And I don't see how you can justify both Youtube Premium and Spotify at the same time or all three of Netflix/Disney+/Prime - I just wouldn't have the time to make any use of all these subscriptions in a month.

wlesieutre 6y ago
Individual podcast creators might be via Patreon, but larger podcast networks can and do have their own donation systems. Same principle and probably a similar amount of money, they just aggregate it between multiple shows and don't want to pay a cut to Patreon. I know Relay.fm and Radiotopia are both set up for that, presumably there are others.
kuu 6y ago
All of them are optional as you don't need any of those. The thing is that at the end you have to choose, of course some combinations are better/make more sense than others, I'm not saying you should have any.
- st1x7 6y ago
  By optional I meant that you can use the service with or without paying. (Example: donating to Patreon or subbing on Twitch is optional; paying for Netflix isn't optional since you have to pay in order to watch anything on Netflix). Obviously using any of them in the first place is optional too.
dcolkitt 6y ago
We subscribe to all of those things. Netflix as the primary streaming service. Disney+ because the kids love Frozen. Youtube so the kids don't get blasted by ads on their iPads. Spotify because it's the only real music streaming option. And Amazon Prime, not for entertainment but 2-day shipping and free grocery delivery. You're talking about $52 a month. For easily 20+ hours of entertainment (or time savings in terms of Amazon Prime). In terms of quality of life, it's much more impactful than say upgrading from a Subaru to a Mercedes. Despite costing an order of magnitude less.

TruthHurts44 6y ago

one word - torrents.

artvark11 6y ago
Torrents are great for previewing content but remember to financially support those that you enjoy.
whimsicalism 6y ago
They seem to have fallen out of favor with the general public.
- TruthHurts44 6y ago
  The general public became too computer literate to use them and the paid services are really really easy to use.
  - bonoboTP 6y ago
    Being from Eastern Europe I can assure you, people lose all their learned helplessness surrounding technical stuff and become proficient torrent users if that's what separates them from their favorite movies and TV series and music. People are "computer illiterate" when they dont care, are lazy or think they can make someone else do the work instead of them.
nicbou 6y ago
Well yes, "don't pay for things" is one way to save money.

vangelis 6y ago

Maybe if there was some sort of service that bundled all these together for one monthly fee.

rmah 6y ago

Many decades ago, when I was a young adult, I probably spent around $30 a month purchasing music (CD's and, before that, vinyl records), $30 a month on newspapers, $30 on magazines, another $40 a month on books, $20 a month on cable TV and maybe another $30 month on video movie theaters/VCR/DVD/rentals. All up, around $150 to $200 a month on various entertainment media. With inflation, that's probably $300 or $400 a month these days. For my income range, this was not at all extreme. For this, I got much much less than what you can get for $300 a month these days.