I like your analogy; no matter what type of access to the band you choose, you can still listen to all the published music. You will miss out on an occasional private gig.
As I said in my initial post I wish MacStories all the best and hope this (risky) move works out for them. I just personally wonder whether content segregation between the tiers is the right model, especially towards loyal readers.
I would accept a choice re. value add new services, e.g. people want to hang out in Discord to drive the upgrades. In your analogy: I can still listen to the music, but I can’t live chat with the band. Now it feels as I am not allowed to listen to all the songs.
There is no transparency either. What Federico does with the membership funds is his business. I need not know. I agree. But in this case since the tiers are so tied together with Apple eco system, and the membership being applied to features it’s hard to justify.
Say there are 100 Members with 90 MacStories members, 8 MacStories+ and 2 MacStories Premium. How is the transparency. To me they are different products totally, the way Federico puts it in his plans. So my membership of MacStories should ONLY be used to fund MacStories as a product. Otherwise I paid for membership, even though I support him financially I’m still paywalled as he uses the funds for Premium tier.
In case of our MPU there is a relay.fm membership and individual MPU membership which I have a choice to subscribe. There is clear transparency here. Backend on the business end there is a difference in funds generated from relay.fm and MPU and how they get distributed.
Again one might lecture me on Apple and it’s products how they use the funds internally. I get your view too. This is just for debate.
I still support MacStories and have been supporting them for many years.
Interesting viewpoint. Agree conceptually. Do believe a company can spend their earned dollars the way they see fit. They will lose that income soon enough if it doesn’t suit their paying customers.
I think MacStories’ quality content is the main attraction to their following, so why trying to limit its reach?
I do realise one of the hardest things to do in an online business is building and keeping an audience and - as it grows - interacting with them. As mentioned before I have nothing against segmentation as long as it is done right and doesn’t discriminate against any tier (allowing clear choices to be made).
The value adds provided should entice people to upgrade and need to be functionally different from the basic tier offering. Subscriber content automatically devalues it to a smaller audience (feels like using your marketing brochures only internally).
So, if you want the writing, forum, and an ad-free podcast, take the basic tier; in case you want to hang out and use chat/discord community take the plus tier and you can get video workshops and John’s/Federico’s phone numbers AND a vote on upcoming topics in the premier tier
I do see value in “ad-free” but see no value in “high-bitrate” or “early release”, There is enough to consume out there in the meantime, so I can wait until it finally comes out, though likely depreciated in value as it will be after the fact and covered by someone else.
Re. value-add; I bet there are people interested in a “behind the scenes” filmed documentary of Federico’s journey writing the iOS 15 review, help him out testing new Focus and SharePlay functionalities running the betas, or even tracking the word count as the review progresses…but for most of us, it will be enough to wait until the review comes out and spend a full night reading it with a good bottle of wine (so why pay for the extra? Unless of course the wine is provided upon release)
I bet Federico and John are currently processing all the feedback and I look forward to seeing this membership program pay off for the MacStories team, even if they lose a few readers in the process. It’s hard to please everyone and make a living…
If a podcast comes early does it really matter. There is still the same wait period of 7 days for next episode (deviations of course during Apple events) either Sun to Sun or Fri to Fri. It’ still the same. Thats not a perk at all.
@sangadi Please don’t compare an important movement against sexual assault to your uncertainty about paying extra for some blog posts and Discord channels.
While I’m at it, maybe the thread can lay off on ad hominems at Viticci and crew.
More on-topic… I had a funny experience listening to the latest episode of AppStories. There were several moments where they referenced things happening in Club MacStories. This is similar to the little jokes other folks make on podcasts with extended episodes.
Once in a while it’s not a big deal, but if these references happen too much it degrades the quality of the episodes. Too much FOMO. Don’t tell me what I’m missing out on!
On one hand, it’s a great driver for subscriptions. On the other, it might lead to reduced listenership on the ad-supported side. An interesting phenomenon, though.
Good for you and I hope many will do as MacStories deserve a bright future! I am not convinced yet.
I hope they diversify their content delivery over the tiers and don’t drive FOMO. Tiers should be based on through value add and not bit rates and release timelines
There’s a lot of assumptions in this, which of course you admit to when you say “it’s hard to gauge these things”. I think people jump to the worst, which is too bad.
@HobbyCollector perhaps I wasn’t as clear I should have been. My comment was based on my reading of the comments in this thread. I have nothing to compare because am not a macstories subscriber.
I do encourage people to support smaller online businesses, assuming you find them valuable and enjoy their content.
I read random things that come into view (usually via Twitter or this forum) but don’t regularly read any publication on any tech topic. OK, maybe I skim ArsTechnica if bored. But I stopped listening to any podcast that just gives hot takes on trivial Mac news items. I don’t subscribe to AppleNews+ and actively try to avoid so-called-news in general.
There goes the argument about not taking anything away…
Oh, and relax @jstuartz. It’s all good. You should probably just apologize for your previous comment so everyone can continue arguing about paying for advice on making shortcuts that literally save you no time. Oh, and widgets, really pretty stickers and widgets…
I think we are beating a dead horse here. No matter what we talk here MacStories is not going to change. I agree three should have been some incentive for members who supported him for years. Many indie app developers did consider existing members during their pricing.
MacStories have put in their work and the have more plans for higher tiers but the fact that they are pay walling basic searching is ironic. Even for content what they paid earlier and are still paying.
It’s like Email provider asking to pay for searching.
