Half the podcasts in my queue have suddenly become paid subscriptions. Meanwhile the overall industry is losing listeners. Seems like a lousy business model to not offer a free with ads feed. What a bizarre trend.
Half the podcasts in my queue have suddenly become paid subscriptions. Meanwhile the overall industry is losing listeners. Seems like a lousy business model to not offer a free with ads feed. What a bizarre trend.
I’m old enough to have known the internet before the ads, and there were a ton of forums where you’d find both information and help for free. Obviously most hobby stuff but still.
I listened to podcasts about roguelikes for example, and hanged out on the popular video game dev forums and it was all free and good.
Serious question: what is the content people create that is so costly today?
I mean it’s nice if you can live off your hobby expertise but there’s also a question about monetising like everything? Or what am I missing :-) ?
Everything needs to be MoNeTiZeD today, even hobbies should be income streams.
Fuck that
if George Carlin was still alive he’d do a stand-up special about this titled “Everyone Is A Whore” or something equally subtle.
at least in America most people generally seem to look down on spending any time on anything that doesn’t make money. even if you don’t actually need any more money. the only worthwhile thing in much of society’s eyes is climbing that ladder.
Ad-supported approaches normalized both free content (in the eyes of the consumer) and also getting paid for creating even very niche content (in the eyes of the creator).
I know, but for 99% of content creation it’s costless (except time ofc) just look at Reddit!
I wonder how many people actually earn something after trying to monetise stuff, I bet very few and it just gets enshittifyed everywhere instead.
You say except time like that’s no big deal. Time is money is a cliche but if you don’t value your time neither will anyone else. I do agree with your overall point though. A lot of content is low effort.
Well these days it still happens. Most lemmy instances, including my own, are free without donations available.
Ha ha yeah mine too :-) I guess I long for those times to come back!
This applies to people that create across any craft. I guess my question to you would be:
“Why do you believe you are entitled to the efforts of their hobby for free?”. If the creator is choosing to give it away for free, and you’re consuming it for free then everyone is happy.
However if the hobbyist is choosing to charge for the content, your choice to pay for it or stop consuming it. Just because they were doing it for free at one point doesn’t obligate them to do it forever for free if they don’t want to. You can lament that you don’t have it for free anymore of course, but getting upset with the creator because you’re not getting it for free seems very entitled. That creator doesn’t owe you anything.
I pay for it by being part of a community where we all try to help, as good as we can.
Can’t you see that the big ones are the ones monetising it all? This idea that everything should be monetized is because they want you to work for them so that instead of helping out someone on a forum for free, you could join this new platform where you can, eventually, earn money, but it would most probably not make you rich but some shareholder.
That also puts pressure on people not helping for free anymore, which the big platforms love, so they can sell that free advice instead…
Well, that’s how I see things.
Can I get some clarification of which thing we’re talking about? I’m reading the thread about podcasters that were formerly making podcasts for free, and are now charging. That was what my response was to.
Your comments about being part of a community seem to talk about something else. Sure, there are plenty of hobbyist forums where everyone contributions and we all consume the results. That’s very different to a podcaster taking the time to research their topic, write a script, go through all the effort of recording, editing, and maintaining all the production infrastructure and promotion of the podcast.
Are you still talking about podcasts or community driven content on forums?
It was you who started screaming about me not wanting to pay for stuff lol.
Whatever, keep paying if you can’t find like-minded people I guess.
Screaming? Apologies if you read that tone, that wasn’t my intent.
I was responding to this line you wrote in your first post:
As for this:
In many cases may not pay, but I also don’t expect the creator do to the work for free. I can choose to go without the content and not pay. However I don’t blame or judge the creator for charging for their work. They have a choice and I do too. I just don’t complain about the choice the creator (as a Podcaster in the context of this thread) makes if it means I have to go without. They own me nothing.
I guess the funny part is you trying to explain basic capitalism(or whatever you are trying to explain; I need something I pay for it, I shouldn’t be “EnTiTLeD” whatever that was about …) For free :-)
Well, you seem to need it. Your argument seems to suggest you are upset that podcasters want to be paid for the work they used to do for free.
Do you have an alternate explanation for your view?
I agree. YouTube and Podcasts should NOT be the primary income or the people making them. They should make it due love of the subject. Get a real day job and do that things in their free time.
I’m also sick and tired of everything being money driven. End of the day I can EASILY live without YouTube and podcasts.
That’s what I do. My Youtube channel is just a repository for tutorials and demos of things I sell, and I use YouTube for the free bandwidth and don’t monetize anything.