Ask HN: What content do you pay for online?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=468457

by AndrewWarner • 17 years ago

8 8 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

This morning alexandros asked if HN readers would pay $5 to use HN. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=467825)

That made me wonder if any of you pay for ANY content.

Here's the content I pay for: Netflix Audible iTunes

floozyspeak• 17 years ago

I think netflix, audible and itunes are different in that they provide tangible "taste-able" content in that you get real something out of it.

The bigger question here is does anyone pay for news, informational content?

My answer would be no. I only pay to have my content managed- backpackit, flickr, animoto

AndrewWarner• 17 years ago

Like you, I tend to pay for tools. Version Tracker, Animoto, Flickr.

I wonder if anyone pays for any content, news or otherwise.

moxy• 17 years ago

I do not regularly pay for any online service. Why? Because there are an enormity of free and open source alternatives. Granted, some "free alternatives" aren't entirely legal, however they're alternatives nonetheless, just with an associated risk.

For movies and music, I use torrents. For applications, I go open source or free -- I can hardly think of any non-entertainment media whose function couldn't be replicated by a readily available free alternative. For storage, there are plenty of sites which offer gigabytes of online storage, gratis.

robfitz• 17 years ago

casual games mostly.. peggle, world of goo, etc.

if hacker news is content, then basecamp & fixx probably also count (team & product news, respectively).

apart from that, i would pay for some TED talks, for high quality game reviews (http://tinyurl.com/cn5guu), and for most of Andrew Chen's blog (http://andrewchenblog.com/).

pclark• 17 years ago

I paid for Last.FM & Flickr.

I don't pay for content it's just one source. Show me a very good news aggregator and I'd be tempted.

mikebo• 17 years ago

Netflix, iTunes, amazon mp3, flickr

apage43• 17 years ago

amazon mp3, lastfm; that's about it here.

robw• 17 years ago

I paid $5 for a MetaFilter account - good intentions, then never used it. That was about 3 years ago.

Other stuff - last.fm, flickr (although its not the content that they charge for), emusic. I wonder if the BBC iPlayer counts? There's a TV license after all.

In terms of news/informational content, I have a subscribtion to New Scientist (dead-tree format), which gives me access to their online archives. But I didn't pay specifically for those archives. I was also a paid-up member of Daring Fireball when John Gruber first went full-time with it. But again, that was to get a shirt more than the content itself.

As moxy says, you can get pretty much anything free if you look hard enough. Seems in my case I'm buying a physical item with 'free' content attached, rather than the content itself.

Ask HN: What content do you pay for online?

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