On Paying People
I saw this tweet the other day and saved it for later, after retweeting it. It’s an idea I really like on the surface due to the fact that, as a twenty five year old, – I’m working that into every blog post I write this year – I like feeling like a responsible patron of the arts without having to work too hard. Yeah, I pay five whole bucks a month to Rdio, and I get to feel like that money is going to the bands I listen to. That makes me feel like a stand up guy. But I also know that the amount of money each band is getting from me isn’t a whole lot. They rely on a bunch of listens. So instead of making me feel good about listening to a band, displaying the exact numbers is probably going to frustrate or discourage me as I see how little impact my individual plays have in moving the bar forward. (For some reason I see a progress bar that can never be filled all the way when I picture this. Sometimes it shows royalties paid out from me next to the average listener.) I still love Rdio and think it’s probably a great deal for artists at any stage in their career. I just think this feature would end up being counter-productive because of how people perceive numbers and what it takes to feel like you’re making a difference.
Interestingly, I didn’t run into any sort of mental block when I was using Flattr. I didn’t have a steady stream of income when I signed up for it, so my handful of Euros a month felt relatively generous. I also was opting in to a system that was totally voluntary and where there is no social pressure to buy the work. Direct payments for blog posts you can read for free isn’t really a thing. The authors post them knowing that they will be consumed for free. And readers expect ads to take care of the bloggers. Just like music subscriptions though, that requires huge numbers to be effective. If I only Flattred one or two different authors in a month they could receive a couple of Euros each, which isn’t a ton, but it’s more than a few clicks on some ads generate. Flattr also had the positive effect of being an encouragement to small talent. I meant each click of that button to be a heartfelt pat on the back and a congratulation of work well done. And I could decide at any given month to Flattr a bunch of items and have many more, smaller, amounts go towards giving someone 15 cents worth of, “Thumbs up!” I ultimately left Flattr not because I didn’t want to pay for posts, but because it wasn’t adopted widely enough for me to pay most of the people I really wanted to pay.
