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The answer isn't microtransactions. Even if you solve the payment problem, Microtransactions involves huge amounts of new friction and creating an entirely new
by hakfoo 5y ago
The answer isn't microtransactions. Even if you solve the payment problem, Microtransactions involves huge amounts of new friction and creating an entirely new selling process and method.
I think the answer is in federation and mutually owned infrastructure.
People are comfortable paying Netflix/Hulu/Crunchyroll $10-15 per month. They don't have to worry about "do I want to watch this episode enough to spend 45 cents for it?" or "do I need to make and manage a whole new account just to watch a different show?" The fact the money eventually gets divvied up to content creators is handwaved away behind the scenes.
Federation gives other creators the opportunity to sell a similar one-stop-shopping experience you that. I could imagine, say, a subscription where I'd get through the paywall not just on my local newspaper, but the dozens of other papers that might print one or two articles a month that I care about. Or a Patreon-style service where you unlocked everyone for a flat fee, and they use analytics to determine how much of the fee goes to each creator each month.
The problem is that most of the content is living on third-party platforms. An OnlyFans or YouTube, for example, could offer a subscription around that model, but they'd just vaccuum up most of the revenue generated for themselves. The creators have to own the platform themselves to prevent that sort of diversion.
- endisneigh 5y agoHow is federation the solution? Federation isn’t free to setup or manage and so now you’re back to square one. It’s funny that you use Netflix as an example because that’s what they originally tried to do and it didn’t work.
- hakfoo 5y agoIt solves the "how do we make non-ad-supported content palatable for consumers." Federation ensures that there's a big enough pool of content that you won't say "I don't know if this is worth $20 per month" or "I'll subscribe for one month and binge-consume everything, then cancel." Yes, it involves customized billing and account infrastructure, but if you set things up properly, the cost of the infrastructure should be less than the revenue it provides. If the federated content creators, in turn, fund a "captive" development and maintenance team to supply things at cost, it may well be cheaper than leasing off-the-shelf solutions.
- endisneigh 5y agoMy point is that only large content producers would even entertain such a thing to begin with, and among those the largest will just spin-off and do their own thing. If you're a YouTuber why would you even deal with any of that vs. just continuing to upload on YouTube?
- j-bos 5y agoThis sounds like what Nebula is attempting to do. A streaming service owned and run by the content creators. https://nebula.app/ https://nebula.app/ No affiliation