BraveSirZaphod

Who is ‘they’?

You’re acting like there exists some single high council of concerned people who have unilaterally decided to pin all childhood woes on the phones, when this is a single article primarily about a particular group of UK parents who’ve focused on this issue and who presumably were never in contact with this American psychologist.

How do you know that these parents haven’t also considered helicopter parenting and free play? Do you know them?

Well, on the plus side, now you know to actually read contracts before you choose to sign them.

In the meantime, enjoy your iPhone.

If the cost of not voluntarily choosing to get myself into bad contracts is being a smug asshole, so be it.

If the phone costs $500, they simply increase your monthly bill by $500 / 24 months = $20 a month.

It’s a bit more complicated than this, and they’ll likely have some interest built in as well, but functionally, it’s no different than being given a loan to buy the phone and then paying the loan off over the two years. That’s why carriers often require a credit check before doing this.

I’ve personally clicked on Instagram ads and made purchases from them. This has pretty much always been for various events, and I don’t really have any regrets there. I’ve seen some cool plays and gone to parties that I’d never have known about otherwise.

I can’t imagine what would ever drive someone to click on a random banner ad though.

So Verizon gave you a phone for no upfront cost, and they’re shitty for making you pay for it if you decide to dash away early?

Fascinating threshold for shitty behavior you have.

I quite liked it, personally.

I imagine saying that is going to be treated as an admission of heresy here though.

Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, will become public domain in literally 13 days.

Okay, so this actually has nothing to do with how YouTube “demonitizes content creators, while protecting doxxers and content thieves”. It’s actually just about you not wanting to pay for it.

Which is fine! But why lie to yourself about it?

The writers almost certainly do get a cut. Musixmatch does not own the copyright to any of the lyrics, and as such, negotiated with the copyright holders in order to be allowed to store, display, and sell access to the lyrics. This almost certainly involved some amount of money changing hands.

Spotify is paying money for access to the lyrics and using that as a feature in their product. A chunk of that money is almost certainly going back to the actual writers.

For the median American that works full-time, who earns around $56,000, the cost of Spotify is 0.2% of their income.

Obviously everyone is in their own financial situation and for some people that will still be a burden. But for sake of comparison, in 1989, the average cost of cable TV was $18, and that’s of course in 1989 dollars. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that $11 for unlimited access to basically all music at any time is a pretty good value for the money.

That said, if it is still onerous to someone, they’re obviously not in ideal circumstances and I’m really not gonna fault them for just pirating.

Spotify is not profitable right now; their current revenue doesn’t come anywhere close to covering their costs. The only reason they’re able to survive is investors holding on to the belief that, some day, it’ll be possible to actually make the numbers work.

I don’t get why anyone would use the free tier - not being able to choose songs would actually drive me insane, let alone the ads - but $11 monthly for essentially all the music anyone could ever want, plus solid playlists and recommendations, is a perfectly good value for me. Admittedly, I listen to music all the time and it’s a pretty big part of my life, so it’s an easy sell.

I guess the free tier is still an improvement over radio, but regardless, producing and distributing music has costs, and I’m more than happy to pay for it. Given that Spotify isn’t even profitable, having lost about a billion dollars last year, I’m not sure how long this situation will last, but for the time being, I really don’t mind it.