Comment by blackbrokkoli | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blackbrokkoli | Hacker News Reader

Nice article, bad examples.

Spotify restricts the amount of songs you can skip to 10 in the free version. And next they play you an ad where they stage the (premium) feature of unlimited skipping as some revolutionary game-changer for music players. This anti-feature has literally no other upside for Spotify other than annoying users into subscribing. Which is all completely fair, since it is free after all but I can't find any mechanism which is more to the point of

  “Provide incentive for prospects to sign up for freemium but do not provide too much value so that free version of the product is enough.”

I'm on the fence about the assessment of Dropbox as well, it has a load of dark patterns like nagging or bait and switch even and especially for paying users, so I'm not sold it wants to be my friend...

> “Provide incentive for prospects to sign up for freemium but do not provide too much value so that free version of the product is enough.”

That was a quote from another Quora answer. The article was my answer to a Quora. I found that quote corny and far from what a startup should be. It's not what I believe in.

As the article mentioned, the Spotify ads are for people who prefer paying with time. If your time that's being reaped by the ads is worth more than the $10/mo, then you're given the option to pay it.

I can't see anything wrong with what they do when looked at it from this POV. I understand where you come from, the "annoy me until I subscribe" but think about 3rd world countries where $10/mo mean way more than they mean in the US. They'd very very much rather pay with time than with currency

Historically, some spotify ads would straight up say they were being annoying to get you to subscribe. "if you subscribe you don't have to listen to these ads anymore!"

I believe they still do, at least the Dutch advertisements.

Personally, I am more than happy paying for Spotify family.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com