Would You Pay to Access WATMM In Lieu of Advertisements?

  On 2/10/2024 at 9:35 AM, MaartenVC said:

• Give subscribers a subscriber-only reaction-emoticon and/or subscriber-only reply-emoticon.

This is honestly such a great idea and a good incentive for people to renew their subscription imo. Another way would be to show how many years in a row people subscribed or something like that. It is impressive how it keeps people engaged with streamers for example.

fixed my sub

just close the loophole?  see what happens?  let's sort the pHaithful from the pHreeloaderz

+ shane&bob provide an idm scholarship fund, for the truly needy triangular beat herders

I want to mention that completely separate from any consideration of how much it costs there is considerable friction in having to pay, and perhaps more so for some countries. Here in the Netherlands we don't use credit cards much, never had one, also never really used paypal. I have no problem paying 3 euros per year for some weird internet forum but, especially back when I signed up and was younger, sure as hell I was not going to ask my parents to borrow their credit card or link my bank account to paypal.

  On 2/12/2024 at 7:41 AM, Stock said:

This is honestly such a great idea and a good incentive for people to renew their subscription imo. Another way would be to show how many years in a row people subscribed or something like that. It is impressive how it keeps people engaged with streamers for example.

I can see if this is possible (and the subscriber-only emoji). Good ideas!

  On 2/12/2024 at 12:52 PM, xy_politics said:

fixed my sub

just close the loophole?  see what happens?  let's sort the pHaithful from the pHreeloaderz

+ shane&bob provide an idm scholarship fund, for the truly needy triangular beat herders

Well, if I do that, a LOT of people would suddenly not be able to post anymore, hence this thread.

  On 2/12/2024 at 4:58 PM, th555 said:

I want to mention that completely separate from any consideration of how much it costs there is considerable friction in having to pay, and perhaps more so for some countries. Here in the Netherlands we don't use credit cards much, never had one, also never really used paypal. I have no problem paying 3 euros per year for some weird internet forum but, especially back when I signed up and was younger, sure as hell I was not going to ask my parents to borrow their credit card or link my bank account to paypal.

So in 2024, how do you pay for things online? Surely you use some form of digital currency, and PayPal does allow payments via debit card (transfers from your bank if you do not have funds). Not sure how that works in the Netherlands though.

  On 2/12/2024 at 6:27 PM, Joyrex said:

So in 2024, how do you pay for things online? Surely you use some form of digital currency, and PayPal does allow payments via debit card (transfers from your bank if you do not have funds). Not sure how that works in the Netherlands though.

In Holland we have our own system for internet payments called IDeal, very rarely I borrow someone's credit card or just do a bank transfer manually if supported. And yeah I can also top up paypal via IDeal (but don't really like to do it, I still have this feeling that paypal is super shady back from when there were stories about them just draining peoples bank accounts with no recourse etc..).

I'm not saying it's not possible (or even all that difficult these days), just that it's a bigger hurdle than 16yo-me would probably take for lurking an internet forum.

By the way, I'm sure this has been discussed before, but what's your opinion on having a 1 year free trial period for new accounts?

  On 2/12/2024 at 6:48 PM, th555 said:

By the way, I'm sure this has been discussed before, but what's your opinion on having a 1 year free trial period for new accounts?

Wouldn't that just lead to people making a new account after a year?

10 USD/year for EKT (and the cheaper tiers even moreso) is a pittance for all this we have and get here, especially as we all know Joyrex nor anyone else is making money out of WATMM, it's all going towards hosting, disk space, admin, and whatnot - this here forum is not a commercial entity, but a labour of love. A lot of people are spending more on cigarettes, beer, or other non-essentials per week, or even on a daily basis. WATMM is a subscription service that gives back way more that it takes, so I, for one, gladly support a community I feel strong affinity towards. I prefer to err in the direction of being principled rather than freeloading, and like I already mentioned, the subscription price is a non-issue, at least to me - but YMMV.

  On 2/12/2024 at 7:11 PM, dcom said:

this here forum is not a commercial entity, but a labour of love.

Well put. Not too many places on the internet I know of where I feel free to be a weirdo and express myself through pictures of wildlife and September 11th memes. Also, from reading this thread, it seems like there are some concerns with targeted (or lack thereof) advertising, and also with making payment processing easier for users not in America or Europe and for younger folk, so I support making those things better or easier for people if it is feasible.

  On 2/12/2024 at 6:50 PM, chronical said:

Wouldn't that just lead to people making a new account after a year?

I don't know if it makes sense to consider it in such an adversarial way. I'd think most people would probably be happy to pay voluntarily if it's easy enough and they've gotten some joy out of watmm in the preceding year, just like most people are happy to pay for netflix/spotify etc.. these days even though you can still pirate.

happy to kick in $$ every year to keep the lights on and ad free  

@Joyrex i tried to subscribe several times, but after filling in my details, the site redirects to paypal, which i don't use (nor i intend to). are there no other pay options?

  On 2/12/2024 at 8:32 PM, cichlisuite said:

@Joyrex i tried to subscribe several times, but after filling in my details, the site redirects to paypal, which i don't use (nor i intend to). are there no other pay options?

I think I can enable Stripe payments, but then that puts more admin overhead on me - let me look into it.

  On 2/13/2024 at 11:50 PM, Joyrex said:

I think I can enable Stripe payments, but then that puts more admin overhead on me - let me look into it.

thanks, but no need. I don't use Stripe either. Wasn't there an option to pay with card a couple of years ago?

To drive the point home, I want WATMM to do the opposite, or at least steer well clear of Cory Doctorow's Enshittification.

  On 2/14/2024 at 4:29 PM, cichlisuite said:

thanks, but no need. I don't use Stripe either. Wasn't there an option to pay with card a couple of years ago?

You can pay via card via PayPal - I don't think you need a PayPal account to do so (last I recall)

  On 2/14/2024 at 4:29 PM, cichlisuite said:

thanks, but no need. I don't use Stripe either. Wasn't there an option to pay with card a couple of years ago?

i think it's possible to do credit card payments thru paypal but there's some admin set up involved.  i can't remember though.

venmo might be a good option too.. 

  On 2/14/2024 at 8:52 PM, dcom said:

To drive the point home, I want WATMM to do the opposite, or at least steer well clear of Cory Doctorow's Enshittification.

Good thing the only investors in WATMM are you guys

I don’t say a whole lot but I say enough and browse this site on a near daily basis so it’s only fair that I kicked in. Hope this place sticks around for a long long time. 

Seems entirely fair to pay a small fee. Tiered, as it is, works for most. Anyone can allocate their membership levels accordingly & I understand this isn’t a profit making scheme.

If you gauge the average age of the forum members currently & the age of the main cohort of artists who are the forum’s main focal points, attracting new blood may not pan out mainly from the law of diminishing returns as decrepitude increases.

Best of luck @Joyrex . Not easy & you had the decency to throw the topic open for discussion too.

  On 2/16/2024 at 3:51 PM, cwmbrancity said:

If you gauge the average age of the forum members currently & the age of the main cohort of artists who are the forum’s main focal points, attracting new blood may not pan out mainly from the law of diminishing returns as decrepitude increases.

yeah this is a good point worth considering here actually. i understand the hesitancy to start making sub forums for every artist/subgenre but being a bit more malleable on this front could help with keeping both the old and the new interested in general, without necessarily exploding the forum or anything, i’d think.

also, some other tiers might be a help. i wouldn’t mind dropping $20/year as an EKT but i just don’t have any interest in the CDR thing

I suppose its difficult to attract younger members cause social media has superceded the forum format. The general banter/community side of watmm is nowhere near what it was pre-facebook, and the aphex/autechre/boc subreddits have also stolen potential members. The reason I still watmm after all these years is because it aggregates a few different things together well: its got the new and upcoming releases forum which alerts me to a lot of smaller labels/bandcamp releases, the music production subforums, and the artist subforums that have the often wacky and entertaining deep dive discussions.

I suppose watmm's general health and prosperity are relative to that of the various subgenres of electronic music that it covers which like everything else are going through a fractured and balkanised period, which might be permanent.

Happy to pay for no ads. I've discovered so much music on here going back almost twenty years.

I actually heard recently there is a trend towards private communities and forums vs social media sites (Meta, X, Reddit, etc.) as the persistent mining of data and monetization of everything is turning people off... this is why I really held out as long as I could before putting ads on the site.

  On 2/12/2024 at 7:53 PM, ignatius said:

happy to kick in $$ every year to keep the lights on and ad free  

I’m in this camp. I’ll do whatever.