31 ms·

Here's how I deal with users who steal

• nakodari 13y ago
  You are running a business, sooner or later your bottom line will be affected. What you should so is inform the Scholarship account holders that $19.99 will be deducted from their total earning of one year. This way it will be a win-win scenario. They get a free account upfront and they pay you later. You are still getting paid in the end!
• nhangen 13y ago
  Technically, it's not stealing, it's hacking the system. It would be one thing if they were using cracked or stolen accounts, but this is a legitimate loophole left open as a marketing tool.
• newrenowhore 13y ago
  Confession: I totally faked the referrals on distrokid, using 5 dispostable.com emails, and was frankly a little surprised when it worked. Strangely, I don't see the "scholarship" plan as an option when I log in, but maybe it only applies to new phonies? At any rate props to you pud, for so many reasons... it's a fantastic model and a great product execution. It's the first product that encourages casual music distribution - but that's exactly why I didn't, and probably won't, pay for it. I have 2 albums up on tunecore, that actually generate revenue. These are albums - professionally recorded, produced, etc. - that I spent money creating, and that I make money back from. I picked tunecore because they were the best thing available at the time, but if I were to do another big release, I'd use them again (despite the fact that I'm not thrilled with the company at the moment because Jeff Price is a great guy and they totally screwed him). And at the end of the day, it's because they have the most distribution partners, and because they send me a check every month. tunecore is for music that I want people to buy. Then Distrokid came out, and I celebrated. I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but musicians make tons of songs that never see the light of day. Maybe the song isn't entirely finished, maybe it's not good enough to pay for mastering, maybe it's part of a musical direction the musician changed his or her mind on. I've got a ton of these, and these are what I'm using distrokid for. I'm not really promoting these tracks, I'm not expecting a great return from them. A lot of them are unfinished experiments or lo-fi fun, nothing market-worthy. But I can put these up for my friends, other musicians, etc. to hear on Spotify at a higher quality than soundcloud can provide. As soon as I make $19.99 from distrokid, I'll buy the yearly, more as a thank you than anything else. But until then, I'm probably going to keep my phony free account. And pud - if you can match tunecore's number of distributors and earnings reporting... well, "disruption" doesn't even scratch the surface.
• pioul 13y ago
  If you're going to play the "nice guy" card, don't offer the "scholarship" plan only to cheaters, while trying to guilt trip them along the way. Letting people use your product for free if they can't afford it is certainly a nice thought, but then you should give that opportunity to everybody.
• JulianMiller520 13y ago
  Interesting that the default mode for so many people on hacker news is judgement. I'm here to learn so thank you for sharing your approach. I find it a refreshing way to engage users who are using the resources either way. Would love to hear more about it's impact over time.
• rajacombinator 13y ago
  Great concept. Not sure it will work but should be interesting to see how it plays out!
• jheriko 13y ago
  I would just like to thank the OP for being brave enough to compete in that space of music publishing. The big guys are all but handing the industry over to pirates by failing to adapt to the marketplace... it's nice to see smart people taking advantage. :)
• exo_duz 13y ago
  Already a good idea, beautiful simple to use, now playing the good guy. I think this is something that is worth doing. Hope Distrokid succeeds :)
• BruceLi 13y ago
  This is good and smart.
• NicoJuicy 13y ago
  It's like taxes. Nobody will protest paying a lot, untill they run out of backdoors. PS. I live in Belgium and we have a crazy tax % here ;-)
• applemacdaddy 13y ago
  I read this article with interest and I have to say that this is a slap in the face of everyone who honestly pays for the software. It's like inviting a burglar back to your house the next day for dinner. Opportunity makes thieves, period. If someone is so broke that he can't afford to pay, and this someone is an honest person, he would probably ask you for a special discount, explaining his tight financial situation. Poverty is no excuse to steal (at least not in my book). Not so long ago I lost everything I worked for in the past 30+ years, including my home. Do you think I steal my way through live now? No I don't, because I was raised that honesty is the most important thing in live-and that's what I taught my kids and that's what I tell my grandkids. What message do you try to convey when you treat thieves the same way than honest customers? I sure wouldn't take my money to a business like this(if I had the money). I believe it invites people to keep stealing from you, because you're asking for it. Dude get real, that's the wrong way to promote yourself by letting everyone know what a good heart you have. Yeah, I know times are hard, but does that give you a free ticket to steal? Absolutely not. And then you have the nerve to compare yourself to the cop in Florida...who indeed did a good thing. This was about food not a frigging piece of software.
• jordn 13y ago
  That's excellent. Please circle back when you get some stats on the response.
• alexholehouse 13y ago
  That's a really nice idea - and I really hope people will respond well. On a related note - distrokid looks amazing. If I were still making music I'd sign up for sure, just for the Spotify distribution if nothing else. In fact, I dare say if this had existed 5-10 years ago it would not only have provided a means to push my music out, but more than that, acted as an intensive to actually create and produce. By lowering the barrier to distribution, you're almost certainly propelling a lot of people to working on musical projects which would otherwise fall by the wayside because there's no obvious end goal.
• iamshs 13y ago
  I like you. How will you deal with revenue hit? Also, how about interesting them into paying for an account when their music sells above a threshold?
• SwellJoe 13y ago
  DistroKid makes me want to start recording my music again, just so I can use DistroKid.
• Amadou 13y ago
  The Bill and Ted rule: Be excellent to one another. On the other hand, I have to wonder about the story of the police officer - how much is it going to cost that woman to deal with the misdemeanor?
  • fomojola 13y ago
    Probably less than the felony she may have gotten.
    • rosser 13y ago
      Shoplifting isn't typically a felony — at least at a grocery store.
      • jacalata 13y ago
        In Florida, shoplifting over $300 of goods is a felony. The article I found said 'about $300 worth of goods' so it's not clear whether it would have been a felony.
  • ruswick 13y ago
    Probably the same as if the officer hand't bought the shoplifter $100 of groceries with their own money.
• rwissmann 13y ago
  This is awesome. I am confident there will be a lot of sign-ups and loyal users coming out of this, while it still helps those who struggle financially. It is not optimal in theory to create rule systems that are abuse-able for personal gain, but this seems like on of those cases where it will work in the real world. I'd be curious to see user decision statistics about this in a couple of months.
• nostromo 13y ago
  Interesting that the "scholarship" (free) plan isn't mentioned on the homepage. It seems you have to try and steal the product before being offered the free plan. I also like the subtle dig, "if you can't afford it." I've certainly pirated things myself. If iTunes asked me, "We noticed you've pirated The Walking Dead. If you can't afford $3, click here to get it for free." By reframing it as charity I might be shamed into purchasing it. :) That's certainly a novel approach. I would love to hear how it turns out.
  • wahsd 13y ago
    I think I would have laid on the guilt a little more. Something along the lines of... "Hi, buddy! We noticed that you created five dummy accounts in order to get access to our referral reward. Thank you for your interest. If $1.66 per month or $0.05 is too much money for you to afford at the moment and it would prevent you from having a roof over your head and feeding yourself but would still like to sell your music and make a living in pursuing your dreams of being paid for your art and work, then you should check out our scholarship account. We believe in our community and are you are a good person that would not like it if people didn't pay you for your work so we are confident you wouldn't do the same to us." Or is that too much?
    • gmjosack 13y ago
      I wouldn't even read that much text in this situation.
  • ars 13y ago
    What if someone can afford it, but isn't willing to? To me that means the price is too high, so maybe also let them set their own price?
    • prawn 13y ago
      It's $20 for a chance to greatly simplify selling your music. If someone doesn't see value in that, leave them to submit everything manually IMO. Can't get dragged down by tightarses.
• sprite 13y ago
  Why not just keep the first $19.99 of revenue if they haven't paid up front? If they are making money they can afford it.
  • prawn 13y ago
    Or why not give them the option to pay as well as offering the scholarship option, but noting that with the Scholarship account, their first $x9.99 will be withheld? If it's not successful for them, it costs them nothing up front. Little bit like how your can start tertiary study in Australia for free, but incur a HECS debt that begins to get paid once you're earning money.
    • tacticus 13y ago
      Making it similar to the hecs (or fee-help as they now brand it) fees would be really cool of your first 100$ we will take nothing but of the next 100$ we will take 20c per dollar.
• nkurz 13y ago
  I think your new system has a lot of positives, but it would be nice if there was a way to gain access to it without requiring the user to start by scamming the referral bonus. I'm concerned that you will be rewarding the users who are willing to cheat, and losing the cash-strapped but honorable users who simply decide not to sign up because they can't justify the cost. On the other hand, I can see why you don't want to advertise the scholarships too widely. Maybe you could keep what you have, and also mention in that fine print that you do offer temporary scholarship accounts for musicians in need, giving a link to an easy but real application to be manually reviewed? And instead of automatically granting the scholarship to scammers, do so only after they fill out the application? In practice, you'll probably OK them all, but the hassle and uncertainty of the application will encourage those who can afford to pay to do so.
• DigitalSea 13y ago
  Wow, I am speechless. This is fanastic, not only is DistroKid a great service but Pud recognises that even at a low price for what the service is, some musicians just can't afford it, so rather than closing accounts, they're giving users an ultimatum to pay or join the generous scholarship program. Take note people, this is how you run a successful startup. It's this kind of respect of your user base that inevitably ends up building loyalty and loyalty amongst a paid service like this is everything. Another beautiful thing about this is that Pud has just publicised the method some people were using to everyone. People who didn't even know about this cool exploit now have the choice of doing so themselves (if they choose too).
• danielpal 13y ago
  This is the sort of thing that sounds reasonably nice and we all wish we could do. However it stops working really fast. I also have a web service and we used to let people get away with this sort of stuff. First year it worked. Second year, the amount of fraud was impacting bottom line and some of this users turned out to be the ones that used "support" the most. So we started banning bad users and blocking their support requests. The overall impact to the "good" users is pretty noticeable now. Not only can we reply to their support e-mails faster, but the overall system is also faster. My mentality shifted. Now I think you "owe" it to the "good" users to remove/ban the ones who steal. They are most likely not zero sum, but pretty negative.
  • ibudiallo 13y ago
    I think the best thing to do is to remove that Scholarship program. In the long run it will be a something people will use just to avoid paying you. Let those who are struggling figure out the system on their own. When they get better financially they will pay you (hopefully).
  • gknoy 13y ago
    Could you simply consider forums/support as a non-free upgrade?
  • hahla 13y ago
    I like the way he approached the problem with the "scholarships" its really clever. But I want to agree with you, as word gets out that its easy to receive the product for free your going to have a large portion of your user base free riding off of the paying ones. Then it comes down to at what point do you continue providing the service when its not profitable to do so.
    • michaelstewart 13y ago
      If that happens here they can easily remove the scholarships.
• makmanalp 13y ago
  This is neat. There is also the other conscience option: Whenever they make money and you're about to send it to them, pop a message saying "Hey, we got your money for you, are you sure you kept your end of the bargain?". Then offer them a chance to pay again or subtract from what they made.
  • nzp 13y ago
    I don't know about this (and I see this idea expressed in other comments)... Something about that just seems wrong to me. What DistroKid is doing is showing good will to users who for whatever reason decide to game the system. It's a fair and square proposition: "This service costs money, we see you are trying to game the system and instead of just kicking you out we are willing to assume you're going to be honest and pay if you can really afford. It's the choice we made (to trust our customers), and that's it." Constantly nagging about payments, when they already agreed to let people not pay, would in my opinion and taste be just pathetic. The message that would send (again, in my opinion) is: "Remember when we said we trusted you? Yeah, well, that was just to get our foot in the door. We don't, so now not only will we take your money, we'll insult your intelligence with this passive aggressive message." I assumed you're proposing this message pops out as the second phase of the current scenario. OTOH, if they offered this kind of deal right from the start it would be a different thing, but please -- sans passive aggressive pop-ups on morality. ;) That said, I think what DistroKid is doing now, as it is, is perfect.
• dmourati 13y ago
  "Even when the user thinks they’ve scammed a free account out of us." ... ...is also always a nice feeling? What?
  • IanCal 13y ago
    Can you really not imagine feeling good for giving away something to musicians trying to publish their music?
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• josh2600 13y ago
  Everytime stuff like this comes up, I think of Cory Doctorow's excellent essay, "All Complex Ecosystems have Parasites" http://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt http://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt If you pave over your lawn when you get your first weed, you may never see the beautiful unexpected mutants that weed might create. We wrestled a lot with this at 2600hz (and I think all open-source companies do). When your clients use your systems in ways you don't intend, you can shun them or embrace them. The latter tends to work quite well whereas the former only engenders bad feelings.
  • wpietri 13y ago
    Great point. My cautionary example for fighting people who use your system the "wrong" way is Friendster. If they had paid attention to their users, they could have been Facebook. But instead they put a lot of energy into banning people who were "doing it wrong". The way I try to look at it is that a company is supposed to be serving the users, not the other way around.
• femto 13y ago
  How about adding an ongoing option to allow scholarship account holders to voluntarily convert to a full account and return their freebie to a pool, so it can be offered to another struggling musician? Such an option would allow users to treat a scholarship as a temporary measure, that they can chose to use, whilst getting established.
  • BHSPitMonkey 13y ago
    This implies that the author will add an upper limit to the number of these accounts (and that the limit will be low enough to actually matter), being potentially unfair to people who are being denied the option (or at least inequitable when compared with the people who received it). It also places a burden on the author to actively prune free accounts that aren't being used, lest they all end up in the hands of non-users.
  • taftster 13y ago
    Ooh, I like this option much better than the author's. Nice thinking.
  • maaaats 13y ago
    Or maybe: Create a free account, but XX dollars are taken from the payout each month to pay for the account. This means one can try the service with no initial investment but still have to pay when one makes money from it.
• prawn 13y ago
  A few other comments from the previous submission of this when it was on Medium: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6630114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6630114
• rythie 13y ago
  Have you talked to these users about why they are doing this? $19.99/yr seems insanely cheap, somehow I find it hard to believe anyone semi-serious about sharing their music wouldn't want to pay it.
• oddshocks 13y ago
  This is the most awesome thing ever. Thank you. EDIT: Though for real this is beautiful and exactly what I want to see because it is what our users are capable of.
• jasonwilk 13y ago
  You could probably write something interesting with a Spokeo, LinkedIn or Klout API that would give a pretty solid idea of whether or not you're dealing with someone broke or just trying to not ante up. Great idea though! Nothing wrong with a little Shaming!
  • nzp 13y ago
    I don't think this is shaming. First of all, people who would genuinely feel ashamed if caught in this situation have such a punishing super-ego that they would be extremely unlikely to engage in cheating in the first place. Second, if you really have no money there's nothing to be ashamed of. It's not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, and this service acknowledges that gentlemanly and with style.
• hristov 13y ago
  Since I am a little lazy, can someone explain to me why this service is necessary. Does apple not allow musicians to upload their music to itunes?
  • glassx 13y ago
    You need to fulfill some requirements to subscribe as a "publisher" [1]: Content Requirements: - At least 20 albums in your catalog - UPCs/EANs/JANs for all products you intend to distribute - ISRCs for all tracks you intend to distribute Financial Requirements: - A U.S. Tax ID - A valid iTunes Store account, with a credit card on file - Apple does not pay partners until they meet payment requirements and earning thresholds in each territory. You should consider this before applying to work directly with Apple as you may receive payments faster by working with an Apple-approved aggregator. [1] https://itunesconnect.apple.com/WebObjects/iTunesConnect.woa/wa/apply https://itunesconnect.apple.com/WebObjects/iTunesConnect.woa...
  • thepicard 13y ago
    They do, it's just a complex and involved process. I don't recall exactly but I believe it might also need an upfront investment as a music publisher or something? I too am lazy. Distrokid also does multiple services in one go.
  • brainfed 13y ago
    No you have to go through a "publisher" of some sort who has an agreement with Apple. Previously sites like CD Baby or Reverbnation offered this service to musicians but they charge annual fees to keep your stuff up on the store. When Distrokid launched he said on Reddit that there was no need for people to pay these annual fees and he wanted to create a cheaper option.
    • rgsteele 13y ago
      You've got this a little backwards. CD Baby, for example, charges per album (currently $49) to sell your music through a number of digital distributors (and they also provide distribution for physical CDs and vinyl records). It's just a one-time fee, but you have to pay it for each album you sell. Distrokid, on the other hand, does charge an annual fee, but that's for an unlimited number of albums.
• losethos 13y ago
  God is perfectly just. You have to get persecuted to be blessed. Highs and lows balance. Joseph in the Bible was accused of rape falsely. He went to prison for seven years. Then, he ran Egypt for like seven years. Bring it on.
• knodi 13y ago
  What a smug blog post.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
• mVChr 13y ago
  One purpose of getting users to sign up 5 friends for a free account is to get more people using the service. One purpose of allowing the scammers to get away with it is to be able to write a blog post about their novel approach that will in turn get more people using the service. I'm not saying that's the prime motive, but it seems like the goal is met either way.
  • _dark_matter_ 13y ago
    It doesn't seem right to demonize them for coming up with a novel solution for their problem and then telling the community about it. As long as the solution IS novel, and is sufficiently interesting, it doesn't matter what the motive was for creating the solution so long as we want to hear about it.
  • stephp 13y ago
    My knee-jerk response was equally cynical. Something about saying, "Look at this 'good thing' I'm about to do!"... Why not do the thing and see what happens first before making an announcement? It's good clickbait either way; just then the article would have some substance and not be so cliche feel-goody. Am I a bad person for thinking this??
    • stephp 13y ago
      Also: anyone who has freelanced knows that those clients who are most reluctant to pay are the worst people to work with, right? So why do we assume that everyone trying to cheat his system is Tiny Tim? lol Maybe it's not good to reward them for trying to cheat? Maybe this enables entitled people to keep on feeling entitled to everything for free? Just saying. I get a little bothered when this sort of thing is met with no criticism at all. Like, he's giving something away for free? He is better than us! If only we all were so noble! lol
• uladzislau 13y ago
  As an alternative solution, why not provide a free account only after all those 5 referred users paid for their first year? It will make no sense to fake referrals and that's why a lot of referral programs work this way. If you're interested in real paid referrals that's how you do it.
• benihana 13y ago
  Love this idea. At a low cost, you humanize your product to your users, you provide people a chance to "do the right thing", you absolve people of their subterfuge, and you increase the chance of conversion. Even if only a small percentage of users do this, that's still a small percentage who weren't paying you before. Brilliant - I hope it works out for you.
• camus2 13y ago
  20$/year is really cheap for unlimited uploads on itunes. I'm from France does it work here too? Do you even need a referal program ? You dont need to do that.
• gbog 13y ago
  I think it is probably not the money but the hassle. If you're not in the USA or have no credit card or fear using it on internet, creating five fake accounts might just be simpler.
• pavanred 13y ago
  Its similar to wordweb's free version licence [1], after the trial it prompts a question about how many flights you took in the past year and based on the answer you qualify for free indefinite use. [1] http://wordweb.info/free/licence.html http://wordweb.info/free/licence.html
• hackerboos 13y ago
  Maybe I don't understand your business model correctly but why not just take the first $20 of royalties from users that steal?
  • 001sky 13y ago
    or even $10. but yes, this is a really good idea. its not like taking an extra % indefinitely or something. more just keeping things honest. which in the long run is health for everyone, imho.
  • e12e 13y ago
    There could be legal issues with that. Might be fine as an option (either pay up-front, or buy "on credit") -- but it complicates the legal relationship somewhat -- did someone pay you for a service? Are they your customer? What happens when they demand a refund, but have only had 10$ paid out? I can understand wanting to keep hands off the royalties and sell the service as a separate product. I agree it might be an attractive option, to some customers. Might not be as attractive an option to the customers you want the most.
    • jacalata 13y ago
      Maybe not actually take it automatically, but pop up another little reminder once they get $20 out of it - "you've now made enough through our service to pay our regular fee! Would you like to pay us now? Upgrade to paid | Sorry, still can't afford it"
      • IanCal 13y ago
        "You said you couldn't afford the $20, you're currently making $80 a year through our service. Can you afford to pay the price all our other customers are paying?"
• smmnyc 13y ago
  I'd love to see how the detection works; is it just based on a fuzzy match on between the referred users' email addresses?
  • chid 13y ago
    probably based off activity of the referred accounts.
    • not_that_noob 13y ago
      Even simpler - just look at the IP addresses
      • icebraining 13y ago
        People often share IP addresses. On our campus, we had a couple of public IPs for hundreds of clients.
• hadem 13y ago
  I'm curious how you define "bogus" referrals. New accounts with no activity? A non-activated account? Accounts created from temporary email providers (ie: Mailinaotr)?
  • monkeyspaw 13y ago
    Probably subsequent signups from the same IP address. You could also put a cookie on the users computer, so you know if that cookie is present for 5 subsequent signups that have little/no activity, it's probably a cheater.
• jakebellacera 13y ago
  Cool idea, but I can't help but wonder if it'd be better to have a "pick your price" option versus just giving it outright for free. Noble, sure, but it would be interesting to see the trends associated with what users picked. Maybe they were only willing to spend $5? Who knows.
  • mistercow 13y ago
    That's a pretty good idea. The YMCA does something similar; if you can't afford the fees, you can fill out paperwork and tell them what you feel like you can afford, and they'll let you pay that instead (or something close to it).
• richardfontana 13y ago
  If "we let them get away with it" how is it "stealing"?
  • mistercow 13y ago
    If you leave your doors unlocked, and I come in when you aren't home and take your computer, that's still stealing, even if you know it was me and don't press charges. Or for a closer analogy, since this is theft of services: If I hire you to make a website for me, and then don't you, that's still stealing even if you don't take any action against me.
    • richardfontana 13y ago
      What if I leave my doors unlocked and write a blog post with my home address saying I know my doors are unlocked, I know people are entering my home and taking things and telling everyone I won't take any action against anyone who comes in and takes my computer?
• unclebucknasty 13y ago
  That's a great story, and a great bit of humanness behind it, but my personal experience is that people will defraud you out of business if you let them. They will take whatever you give them, and then some. Most people are actually honest, but you just need "enough" who aren't and who are also greedy (i.e. the typical fraudster) to lose your shirt. It depends on the model though: If the author's model is such that his costs are bounded and are otherwise absorb-able, given the revenue driven by honest customers, then he may be OK. But, our model is such that not busting the user can literally lead to unbounded losses and these guys show no compunction whatsoever about driving you into the dirt if they can make a buck.
• leoh 13y ago
  So they get free music distribution and free lessons from a moralist.
• ced83fra 13y ago
  It's a good idea. People don't want to think they can't afford it, so they will probably pay for it. However, I think another pricing plan could be great : It costs virtually 0/year, BUT, 50% of the first $40 of royalties are taken by the site, and the rest sent to the user. Thus the user can still see he is earning something from the first track sold.
  • sitkack 13y ago
    This hurts his pricing plan effectively moving EVERYONE to the "pay us when you make money" plan. I'd say 50% of the first 80$, that way they still get a check on their first sale but they ended up paying a little bit more ($20).
• thecodemonkey 13y ago
  I was actually wondering how to detection works. Just checking if all users have the same email domain name (with the exception of a white list such as gmail, hotmail, etc.)? Or flagging users that are using mailinator/5minutemail/whatever?
  • Amadou 13y ago
    He's probably got a handful of tools in the bag, but the first on my list would be to cross-reference IP address with invites. If one ip address signs up all/most of the invites then that is a pretty big clue.
  • wpietri 13y ago
    That's the kind of thing you don't want to post about. Abusers basically work as hill-climbing algorithms. If you catch them, many will just try again after tweaking something. When in the past I've fought abusers my approach includes: minimizing opportunities to gain information; minimizing signs of progress; lengthening feedback loops as much as possible; increasing the cost of trying to get information; and, when you change things, changing several things at once, so that they have to figure out several things to get back in.
• ruswick 13y ago
  I dislike the comparison that the OP draws between scholarships and the given example of the officer buying food for the shoplifter. In the case of the latter, the officer is providing an additional opportunity for the woman by purchasing groceries that she otherwise wouldn't have been able to afford. In the case of the OP, the users making artificial accounts receive exactly the same service at the same price, and so no opportunity is being generated.
• marincounty 13y ago
  This is a good business plan. The larger music companies should hire some new blood? or, Not--I coukd care less; 90% of artists were screwed out of royalities on their music by thiefs. The successful ones are were rare, and if they made money, they just ruined their health with drugs and alcohol. Napster ruined the music industry model. Maybe it should stay that way? A good band, Protools, and a little effort will publicize Tallent. I've noticed a darth of anything remotely original lately. I hope B. F. Skinner wasen't right, and we have come to the end of originality?(no he didn't predict anything, but you can draw conclusions on his theories.
  • eruditely 13y ago
    What are you even saying?
  • eruditely 13y ago
    What are you even saying?
  • eruditely 13y ago
    What are you even saying?
  • eruditely 13y ago
    What are you even saying?
• thejosh 13y ago
  How about you make $19.99 then that covers the cost of your account? It's a win/win situation for those without credit cards.
• nfoz 13y ago
  Personally, I consider "free if you refer 5 users" sort of an offensive trick. It presents quite odorously the falseness behind the $20/yr pricetag, and makes me value the ethics behind that price less.
  • hobs 13y ago
    Really? To me that means the service thinks that if can subsidize new users because the initial cost isnt as much as their purchases will make, and no business makes all of its revenue from a first time shopper (with rare exceptions). That means the service thinks each user is worth about 4 bucks. Actually not that expensive of a lead generation if it brings in 20 a year. I would be interested in your thoughts regarding this, because I have seem some lead generation sites pay 50 dollars for the right kind of lead.
    • nfoz 13y ago
      You're thinking entirely from the business side; how a business perceives its profit model. As a consumer, and thinking specifically to when I had less means: perhaps wrongly, but I have an acute perception of the value of anything I purchase in terms of the work that actually goes into its production. I'll pay for a service if I'm not being scammed, if some real human effort went into producing it. If it's just a copy of something that was already produced, then there's nothing for me to pay for. Similarly, if it costs $x but "free if you tell 5 friends", suddenly the whole experience is cheapened. It's perfectly concievable that I could tell 5 "friends" and this has 0 effect on you. My mind starts to wander. Why should I pay more because I don't have 5 friends? Why should I pay more because I'm not willing to shill myself out and strain the relationships I have, to give you some cheap advertising? I consider the premise offensive, and I also see that maybe you don't need the $20 as much as I do. It's not a great way of thinking, but I think the onus is on the salesperson to have some respect for their clients and not smugly write them off as "stealers" when their storefront provided what might be perceived by those clients as a sales trick. shrug
• hipaulshi 13y ago
  oh man. that deserves a big heart icon. (i.e. this is jus sweet). Earning money at the same time teaching people to be adult.
• stevenkovar 13y ago
  I think it would be interesting to make it free to use, until you want to start collecting your royalties. Perhaps give them the option to apply their first $19 in royalties to the service (or at some discounted rate, as you can potentially collect interest on unclaimed royalties at scale).
• christopherryan 13y ago
  GOSPEL ARTIST POSES NUDE! Evon Latrail is the author of a children's book "When Mommy Went to Heaven". She wrote/recorded a few songs; "Lord Bless My Enemies. And, even has a song entitled, "Can't You See (Abortion Is Murder). She went Pro-life after having a abortion! Really???? Now here is a photo of her posing in chocolate as a "Swamp Girl". The word Hypocrite is floating around somewhere. This story has made front page news in the local paper. Go to Google or YouTube and search, Evon Latrail.
• laureny 13y ago
  Very clever. I wonder if you could make this official with something like this on the home page: "If you are interested in our product but you can't afford it, please send us an email explaining why you can't afford it and we will give you a free license". That's it, no conditions ("at least two paragraphs, and it has to feel real!"), no lecturing, just asking people who can't spend money on the product to spend some time instead. I wonder if the extra thoughts that would-be pirates would have to put into writing that email would be enough to make them reconsider and actually buy the product they would have otherwise pirated...
  • larrys 13y ago
    Maybe. But keep in mind that gaming the system to some people is it's own reward. In that someone might feel like they got away with something or pulled the wool over someone's eyes. Which could make them feel good. Writing a "hardship" letter doesn't provide the same feedback (to those people). And while in some respects "gaming" can be cheating writing a hardship letter (when there is no hardship) would feel different to some people. Would be interesting to test though for sure.
• joeblau 13y ago
  That is not what I was expecting, but it is awesome!
• EdgarVerona 13y ago
  Kudos, that's great! I think that's a very cool option - I feel like there's a lot of musicians out there who are dirt poor, trying to find a way to break through. It'd be interesting for you to offer the option to scholarship accounts to donate later - and then see which ones actually make it big enough that they decide to pay you back for your service!
• lysium 13y ago
  I like that idea! Remembers me of the German magazin 'brand eins' that offered a 'social' subscription where you won't pay for a year if you're struggling with making ends meet. You just had to tell them, no questions asked.
• AhtiK 13y ago
  I don't believe this will convert well. Converting to paying customer should include a positive reinforcement. I would never be a customer of a service where the company tells me that I stole from them in the first place. For the DistroKid case I'd say stealing is a strong word for creating a few dummy user accounts. I'd guess many of us have asked friends to use Dropbox referral codes to sign up even when you know they might not continue to use the service. If a legitimate person is caught stealing then one is ashamed and prefers other services.
• theblackswan 13y ago
  Nice..atleast you have given it a logical end. On facebook 20% or more accounts are fictitious made for games or other piety purposes. I have tried to bring in notice of FB but they wont delete account. Later I tried to do an experiment and created a fake account myself and post malicious pics. Again through my account when I brought this to notice, they won't delete it. I figured out how they are siphoning off advertisers money through these [atleast 100 million fake accounts]. I appreciate your purpose has a meaning to it and somehow this is a good attempt to bring thing to a logical end by providing it as a service. This scholarship will indeed help a lot of struggling music artists.
• mehrdada 13y ago
  "Stealing" has a very narrow definition. Causing someone to lose some potential revenue is not necessarily stealing.
  • V-2 13y ago
    I believe it's called theft of services. So of course you're right that they're not "stealing" the 20 bucks they failed to pay, but rather the service they were not authorized to use (since they entered the promotion fradulently).
• chmike 13y ago
  This reminds me of Les Misérables of Victor Hugo published 1862. Jean Valjean stole silvers goods from a priest but was caught by the police. Brought back in front of the Priest with the goods he stole, the Priest said that he gave them to him and that he also forgot the silver candelabra. The Priest than gave them to him. It was the first time Jean Valjean met a good man and this was a shock to him which changed all his life as you can read through the story.
• vishal0123 13y ago
  How can they detect user who refers the fake account. I would love to get this functionality in my site too.
  • ozh 13y ago
    I guess most users won't bother making it complicated to track down: same IP, cookies, session, whatever.
    • vishal0123 13y ago
      So you are saying that distrokid tracks down user even after logging out of the site.
    • nfoz 13y ago
      Does that mean I can't refer a family member?
      • itsybitsycoder 13y ago
        How about 5 family members in the same household within a couple of hours?
• robmcm 13y ago
  Why not offer a plan that takes the money after they start getting paid. You could take the full amount before they start getting paid, or take a percentage cut of each payment. In order to make it fair to the people that stump up the cash first you could also charge them slightly more.
• jasonkester 13y ago
  I've had pretty good success giving away free accounts to my products to anybody who writes me an email asking for one. For Twiddla, there's actually a line on the pricing chart suggesting you do so if you're a teacher or student. Marginal lifetime cost for servicing an additional account is roughly $0.00, give or take a penny. Marginal benefit from a happy customer with a fresh free subscription and a Twitter account is somewhat higher. So while you can spin it as goodwill and charity, the bottom line is that it's just good business sense.
• justplay 13y ago
  I am waiting for the next blog-post to see how does it work.
• benjamta 13y ago
  Really like this approach - fascinated to know how this works out over time.
• disputin 13y ago
  Um, how many variations of the shoplifter story have we seen?
• antocv 13y ago
  Thats nice and good for you, your users and your business. However, be cautious to not get the leechers, those users who are rich and still would suck others dry. There are plenty of those in the world. I believe for your service, they still wont do much damage to you, compared to the musicians who really have no money and just want to get by. But still, be cautious. And dont call it stealing, its something else going on here, its fraud or malice or leeching.
• Void_ 13y ago
  I'm doing something like that with the trial of my time-tracking app, Zone. (http://rinik.net/zone http://rinik.net/zone) The trial version creates this file: NotTheFileThatStoresInformationAboutTrialDates.txt If you simply remove it, the trial is reset. I would rather spend the $5 then do it every month, so hopefully my users think in a similar way.
• NanoWar 13y ago
  I heard of products that were added to torrent sites by the creators specifically to get pirated, but after the install there was a pop-up asking kindly for a donation :D .