Flattr

[Furah]

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bays-peter-sunde-starts-money-sharing-site-100212

 

Computers and the Internet have made it extremely easy for anyone to produce content, and distribute it to millions of users.

 

Musicians and movie makers can share their work with the rest of the world with very little investment, something that was impossible little over a decade ago. Similarly, weblogs are able to provide news and information much faster than old media at relatively low costs.

 

The Internet has brought us a tool to share and consume content, but up until now there has been no really easy way for the consuming side to reward content producers. Flattr, a new venture started by The Pirate Bay’s former spokesman Peter Sunde, opts to change this.

 

Flattr has been in development since 2007 and finally opened up in Beta this week. It is best described as a mashup between social content discovery sites such as Digg, Reddit and Stumbleupon, and an online payment service like Paypal.

 

“It’s a new revenue stream for people who share their content! It’s a combination of a donation system and a quality list of interesting content online,” said Peter Sunde describing the service to TorrentFreak.

 

Users who join the site can use it to discover interesting articles, great music and useful software, like on the aforementioned social discovery sites. If they see something they like they can give it a thumbs up, which is nothing new either.

 

The innovative part is that users of Flattr set a monthly budget they are willing to donate each month to the content they like. This can be as low as $2, or whatever the user is willing to share. At the end of the month the money is shared between the creators of the content they liked, who are all Flattr users as well.

 

In other words, Flattr allows consumers to flatter content producers for a flat-rate fee, and offers a revenue stream to those who create and share content.

 

The idea behind Flattr is innovative, but for the service to be a success the user base has to be significant. If Sunde and friends succeed in that they have an ideal solution to pay off the people who share their work for free.

 

Those who want to give Flattr a try can sign up for a Beta invite.

 

Video explaining Flattr.

 

I really like the sound of this. It will be extremely useful, especially for indie artists. It allows you to gain an income, and the money goes to you, not the man in the suit who takes a big cut to makes sure you pay him back.

[Lenticular_J]

This will be good for the tiny artists. The big artists aren't taking huge hits from all these "threats" to the recording industry anyway. They make their money touring and from the rights to their music (ever looked at a film's music budget?).

 

Looks cool, though. Doubt I'll use it.

[Abc1230]

You can either watch stuff for free or donate to the people who made it... I don't think I get it

[Giordano]

I see the idea of it but don't think it'll go down too well.

 

This will be like YouTube: idiots like Fred would get all the clicks and those with actual talent would get very little. Thus idiots like Fred get money, but whats worse, it came from those talented folks.

[Furah]

You can either watch stuff for free or donate to the people who made it... I don't think I get it

Each month, the amount you selected to donate will be taken from your bank /PayPal/whatever account, and is evenly distributed among the artists who you Flattr'd.

It will become more effective as time goes on and the user base grows where even if the average is like $0.10/artist they'll make enough money each month.

[dsavi]

I don't know. There are still other ways of getting money, like selling physical copies of your content before releasing it on the internet. Some projects that have done/are doing that? Big Buck Bunny, Elephants Dream, Yo Frankie! and now Project Durian/Sintel.

 

OT: That video is also proof that they can't speak Swedish properly in Sweden.

[dsavi]

^ You get the product for free anyway, whether you press the flattr button or not.

It works using the principles of wanting to share and spontaneous combustion impulse purchases. Usually by the time you've decided to hit the paypal button and are typing in your account password, you've had plenty of time to change your mind. And then there's the fact that you're giving away money that you can almost certainly do without.

[Omar]

This is pointless. Why would I want to pay even $.10 when I can easily get the same product for free?

The way I see it, this website is going to be 90% indie creators and 10% consumers because of this very reason. Which would mean there's hardly any money fed to the program that's not an investment from producers. That's a lot like speculating on the stock market, a few people will make a considerable profit and a large amount of small producers will hold back from flattring in an attempt to break even, because most of the consumers' money will to the bigger producers. But hopefully, small producers won't mind the small loss that 2- dollars per month represents.