Users always talk that they would love to pay. The problem is, they never do. They blog and write on forums about what they would like to see, but the things they write are always very, very different from what they actually do, according to the data.
You remember how in this whole Reddit debacle Pao said that "most of users don't really care about this scandal" and got downvoted to hell? It could very well be true, but users who were constantly around subreddits that were involved in the drama couldn't believe it. They are sure that evil corporate suits are out of touch with reality because they "don't even use their own service" and consume the information in form of PowerPoint presentations. But those suits are very well in touch with reality — it is a couple of SQL queries away from them, actually. (And I see that "managers" are getting more and more literate in terms of analytics, by the way — SQL and R aren't really that hard, and often you have much more user-friendly analytic services at your hands).
I'm not saying that big websites don't do bullshit. Of course they do. But when they do something that users actually don't like, users punish them in the most harsh way possible: with their wallets. Don't you remember how internet used to be? The hundreds of popups, for example — turns out, users didn't like it enough to install Firefox, so these guys went out of business. I could recall more examples like this, but this comment is already too wordy; you get the picture.
If you want to stop Buzzfeed, don't click clickbait and shame (in a constructive way — without calling them idiots, but making them feel a little bit low-brow, basic manipulation isn't that hard) your facebook friends for reposting such bullshit. And if you won't succeed, you'll just have to face the reality of being one in several billions.
Auto enthusiast site commenters claiming "If Manufacturer A would build this car with X motor, Y drivetrain, and at Z price, I'd totally buy that!" or "If only Manufacturer B would bring Car XYZ to the US it would be a huge hit!"
If history is any indicator, no, those types of vehicles will not sell well. Recently I've seen the discussion around the Chevrolet SS (Holden import), because while on paper it's on par with other performance sedans, it's selling very poorly. Granted, it had low expectations by GM, but it's just an example of this mentality / vocal minority over-inflating their self-importance in the grand scheme of things.
> They blog and write on forums about what they would like to see, but the things they write are always very, very different from what they actually do, according to the data.
That's because content providers make it fucking impossible to buy their content a lot of the time!
I've been looking into this here (the Netherlands) for the last 12 months or so. It is so incredibly hard to go into a pay-per-view movie service, whether that's a cable TV video store, Netflix, Apple TV or what-the-fuck-ever-else, search for a fairly popular movie you like that came out in the last 5-10 years, and actually BE ABLE TO BUY IT.
Content providers are almost entirely at fault here. (I know this as I'm currently working at a cable TV company). They insist on negotiating individual contracts for restricted selections of (movie, series, whatever) content with each streaming/VOD provider individually. They will happily let customers buy an SD movie but charge them again, 2x, for a HD movie. They throw up all kinds of hurdles when it comes to recording TV in the cloud -- it is LEGALLY DIFFICULT to just store one copy of a recording for multiple customers.
The list goes on and on, it will drive you crazy if you have to deal with it.
> But those suits are very well in touch with reality — it is a couple of SQL queries away from them, actually. (And I see that "managers" are getting more and more literate in terms of analytics, by the way — SQL and R aren't really that hard, and often you have much more user-friendly analytic services at your hands).
Those suits are in touch with reality indeed -- they see that this business model has worked and continues to work, despite The Pirate Bay. They just need a large enough army of lawyers to maintain their dominance, both over distributors and customers (via lawsuits and website takedowns).
Don't blame the users for the clusterfuck digital content distribution is. It is the content providers who are to blame. They screw the artists, the distributors, the end users, as hard as they can, for as long as they can.
Look at netflix share prices. Then look at your cable company's. Then look back at netflix. It's on a horse. (OK, the pun is stupid, sorry).
I don't pretend that it's all rainbows and butterflies. It sucks a lot of the time, and I share your pain. My point is, that on a large scale, industry does move when users want it to be. Slowly, painfully, but this is happening.
Compare today with 10 years ago. It is a more appropriate time frame to evaluate change in such gigantic industries. Did you try to buy games online then? Movies? Music? How was your user experience? iTunes fails me often (and as a DJ who uses it for library management, it hurst a lot), but the ability to hear song on the radio and buy it in scope of 20 seconds is awesome. Or, nowadays, just add it to my library without actually buying and evaluate whether I should buy it later at home.
Thank you for the explanation! At this point, I've given up on streaming services to watch movies. It's actually so much easier for me to just walk a couple blocks down to the video store and rent the Bluray...
> Users always talk that they would love to pay. The problem is, they never do.
Perhaps there are other reasons than not willing to. Say, for example, in Germany credit cards are not that common (other methods, like SEPA direct debit are used). Or they are in principle willing to pay, but not for the product that is offered (say, because of DRM or watermarks). Or they would pay, but don't trust their credit card number to some small, dubious website. Or they would pay, but are afraid of some hidden usage terms for the website that implies some kind of subscription (and thus future payments) that you don't want.
TLDR: There are lots of other reasons that can explain, why people would love to pay, but don't.
That doesn't really matter for a company that has already raised some money and now desperately looking to get out of red, does it? (I'm not talking about Reddit or any companies in particular right now, just remembering my mind state when I was CEO/Founder: I can almost feel that desperate depression again).
Indeed this matters a lot and is what is called "business model". Just to give a comparison:
a) Users are willing to give away some of their personal data. Unluckily it seems not to be easy (for various reasons that are off topic here) to monetize this asset for many companies so that they can't or have difficulties to use it to get out of the red.
b) Users are willing to give away their money. As I've shown this asset is also not that easy to leverage, thus also not easy to use to get out of the red.
I'd consider myself a lurker most of the time and I tend to express myself more through actions than posting on the web. In this case, I already do pay - I have a subscription to DI.fm, and was actively looking for something similar on Soundcloud when they rolled out the ads. Unfortunately, as there isn't anything, I've simply started using Soundcloud less in favor of DI.
This isn't the first time I've been frustrated with Soundcloud either. I listen to a variety of electronica that's often hard enough to buy that I was searching for stuff on youtube and bookmarking before I started using Soundcloud. It was only after some months of use and I sizable list of favorites that I found songs on Soundcloud could just disappear from my list with no warning and nothing left behind - which means if I can't remember the name of the song of spend an hour searching, I'm unlikely to find it again. At least with my youtube bookmarks the title and artist are never lost, even if the video is taken down. (I contacted their support about this and got a positive response, but its been a couple months this has happened at least twice since then.)
So for me, at least, Soundcloud is on its way out. And that's really disappointing, because I think on the whole they have a great platform.
I'm more familiar with Soundcloud from the publishing side: I seldom listen, but that's the primary place where I share my music.
The point is, SC isn't built as a service that provides a sound library. Just compare how easy it is to publish a track on iTunes and on SC: there's this huge button in the top that calls you to upload something. iTunes is a shop, it's got everything (actually, it doesn't have a lot of tracks, but you can replace it with Beatport or Juno, doesn't really matter). Soundcloud, on the other hand, is more oriented toward releasing what's here and now. I've hidden and deleted my own tracks a lot of times: sometimes they were WIPs that I didn't want to release anyway, sometimes I decided to remove the track from public access so I can release it on a label later, and sometimes I just decided that a track sucks and should be ashamed of it.
Could it be that these tracks were hidden because of similar reasons? Or, may be, they were uploaded by users who didn't have the rights to these tracks in the first place?
Taking a look at Alexa, the trend for Reddit has been and still after the "Pao debacle" is upwards. They are constantly getting new users, probably much more than what they lost. So from the viewpoint of the management all is well. These new users are also probably more susceptible to their monetizing efforts.
The fact that Reddit has in the last 6 months lost most of their high quality content creators does not seem to concern them.
Users always talk that they would love to pay. The problem is, they never do. They blog and write on forums about what they would like to see, but the things they write are always very, very different from what they actually do, according to the data.
You remember how in this whole Reddit debacle Pao said that "most of users don't really care about this scandal" and got downvoted to hell? It could very well be true, but users who were constantly around subreddits that were involved in the drama couldn't believe it. They are sure that evil corporate suits are out of touch with reality because they "don't even use their own service" and consume the information in form of PowerPoint presentations. But those suits are very well in touch with reality — it is a couple of SQL queries away from them, actually. (And I see that "managers" are getting more and more literate in terms of analytics, by the way — SQL and R aren't really that hard, and often you have much more user-friendly analytic services at your hands).
I'm not saying that big websites don't do bullshit. Of course they do. But when they do something that users actually don't like, users punish them in the most harsh way possible: with their wallets. Don't you remember how internet used to be? The hundreds of popups, for example — turns out, users didn't like it enough to install Firefox, so these guys went out of business. I could recall more examples like this, but this comment is already too wordy; you get the picture.
If you want to stop Buzzfeed, don't click clickbait and shame (in a constructive way — without calling them idiots, but making them feel a little bit low-brow, basic manipulation isn't that hard) your facebook friends for reposting such bullshit. And if you won't succeed, you'll just have to face the reality of being one in several billions.