Sublime

In other words, Medium tries to be the Spotify of articles: you can have an audience, but you can’t control it. Pool your content with the rest, and we’ll expose it to readers (listeners) we control, and give you a share of the money we make.

Let’s compare: Readers assume content is free. Music became free. Napster wasn’t about making music free as much as it was about user experience and user control. Listeners demanded a better experience and Napster was the catalyst for that. Newsletters, and curation are similar. Out of Napster came streaming. With a new user experience and ability ... See more

In the past in the internet, you’ve seen platforms choose either to be ad-supported or to be subscription. In the future, I think you’re going to see ad-supported, subscription, and a la carte play key roles.

By dispersing tools to millions, Roblox has made money for independent developers and created a flywheel for its own future growth. Nearly 1 million creators earned Roblox’s in-game currency (“Robux”) with their creations, and over a thousand have made over 10,000 real dollars in the past 12 months. 250 of its creators made over $100,000.

To support engagement-based monetization, Spotify and its label suppliers had to define engagement. And they chose to do this on a per stream basis with a minimum stream time of 30 seconds (to avoid accidental plays, track skipping, etc.). However, this meant that a 10-minute track, five-minute track and 31-second track generated the same royalties... See more

Fuller is something of a philosopher of digital design; his podcast “Scratching the Surface” canvasses experts in the field. In the past decade, he argues, a “user-centered” approach to design has been replaced by what he has taken to calling a “corporation-centered” approach. Rather than optimizing for the user’s experience, it optimizes for the e... See more