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Justin Ling's avatar

It's so difficult! Youtubers are constantly trying to navigate Youtube's community/copyright policies — which often change without warning or explanation. One of my favorite Youtubers is Digging the Greats (he does these deep dive music explainers.) He's been constantly demonetized because he plays too many short clips from the music he's talking about (which is fair use, through and through.) He breaks it down here, it's *really* interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyuBVK-KZLs

And the Substack equation is so difficult. I put relatively little behind the paywall, which I expected to hurt my paid subscriber numbers — but people keep signing up for paid subscriptions, which is really heartening. (On that note: If you, or other subscribers, have suggestions on perks they'd be interested in, please let me know!)

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Recreational Nihilist's avatar

I am probably not the best one to ask. To me your substack is the perk. I don’t need more then this. Your work here is worth the subscription fee alone, but for you and the few other people I have paid subscriptions for on Substack, it’s generally because I appreciate their contribution to the media landscape on a broad level.

I do wonder how well it works for people who have everything behind the pay wall, does that really equal more payed subscriptions?

Tangent number 2. I work in an industry with similar funding concerns, sort of. I work for a non profit that plans, constructs and maintains trails as community amenities. There is no obligation to pay to use trails. The funding model is complicated, but largely grants, and government funding of various kinds, with some corporate donations in the mix. It is very inconsistent, both from region to region and year to year. Some users chose to either become members of their local trail organization, or make donations, but the vast majority of users do not. This is cause for much naval gazing across North America. No one has has figured it out. Most people appreciate trails, everyone figures someone else should be paying for them.

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