thinking

[ewt]

I wonder what sort of subscription service I could hang off the website.... something for £2-4-ish/month. Possibly access to higher-quality MP3 files? Possibly getting rid of some sort of download limit?

Is this a terrible, doomed idea, or a quite good one?

I don't want to bug everyone to sign up for premium service all the time, because, hey, sucks. I don't want a huge gulf between the free services and the paid-for-services - everything we sell has to be free in some format and should be easily accessible. However, as the site gains popularity, having some kind of subscription service might be an easy way to gain revenue for the artists and make sure our costs are covered.

I need to think about money transfer and how that is going to work, too. PayPal? WorldPay? Something else? Why? If we do something by subscription, will that be the same or can people use a Standing Order if they're in the UK?

Comments

What I'd like to see for paying users

[pplfichi.livejournal.com]

No ads (some of us really don't like them =) )

Higher quality mp3 files (but still low enough that it's worth most users getting a lossless version)

A discount on things that you buy OR a set number of things for free (maybe using a credit system if somethings will be considerably more expensive and using a flat number is impossible. Eg £4 a month gives you foo credits, most items cost 1 credit but bar and baz type things cost 3 credits). Or possibly mixing the two, by giving a certain number free and then some sort of discount on anything above that.

The subscription is easy to cancel and predictable in when it takes money from you.

Whatever clever personalisation stuff you can come up with.

With profiles and subscription an option to delete one's profile (within the confines of the law) would be very nice too.

AFAIK systems such as Worldpay, the hold your money for some time (measured in months) before giving it to you to protect themselves. Something to check and consider when you get that far.

I also don't know how true the various horror stories that are around the Internet regarding Paypal are (on the other hand they are a convenient backup source as they are well recognised and deal with a good number of payment methods...)