- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
Marques Brownlee, known as MKBHD, faced backlash over his new wallpaper app, Panels, due to its high subscription cost ($49.99/year) and concerns over excessive data permissions.
Brownlee acknowledged user feedback, promising to adjust ad frequency for free users and address privacy concerns, clarifying that the app’s data disclosures were broader than intended.
The app, which offers curated wallpapers and shares profits with artists, aims to improve over time, despite criticisms of its design and monetization approach.
You must log in or register to comment.
No sane individual is going to pay for a subscription for phone backgrounds.
That is absolutely a stupid business idea and the people who came up with it should be publicly shamed.
You think it’s new? It’s have already done by so many people in Android community. Like Widepaper, Wallfever, Wallbyte etc. These all apps are paid. People actually pay for Wallpapers.
I think buying an app for a couple of quid that has a good curated collection of wallpapers, a nice UX, etc. is a completely fair price to pay for the convenience. I like supporting devs. I fail to see the stupidity.
A $12 monthly subscription is an entirely different beast, though.
Or even a market that let you just buy individual wallpapers as you want them, like how you used to be able to buy individual tracks in itunes instead of a whole album.
A subscription model is a bit silly.
I’ve not looked into it, but it’s probably pitched as a feel-good way of supporting artists.
Remember when people paid for ringtones? Doesn’t mean it isn’t stupid, especially as a subscription, but people do stupid things and other people take advantage.
Wallpapers on phone are useless because apps are always full screen.
Who would pay for such thing?
Apparently one of the wallpapers is just solid orange. It’s called “Orange”, is labeled as “abstract”, and is labeled with a copyright.
It’s a solid orange rectangle.
Anish Kapoor strikes again
Maybe it’s inspired by Rothko
The artist spent a lot of time on that!
Months to get that perfect shade of orange.
And just the effort of painting every one of those pixels one by one, it’s not like we have some magic tool to fill an image with the same color and call it a day.
Perhaps more likely years of work with colour and colour theory preceding a quick output of some content? Why the sarcastic tone?
The sarcastic tone is likely because of the price. There is something jarring about such a simple product, even if it was made by an artist with a good eye for color, being behind such a large paywall. Most people find this app, even forgetting “Orange,” to be overpriced, myself included. It should be expected for people to use the most extreme examples to point out the absurdity and to laugh at it, especially when it’s being marketed to the public.
Had this been an app you buy for $10 once, still there would be people like this, but much less. And if it were free, for example, nobody would bat an eye. The outrage is caused by price.
I’m not invested in this debacle at all, really. I just found your lack of understanding interesting. Not trying to offend you by that.
Who would pay for this?
Marques has a decent chunk of his fan base that’s…kinda rich? That’s the only thing that can explain why he reviews supercars and expects people to use their phone without a case. So if he’s directing some of that fan base’s money toward artists, I’m all for it, assuming the profit sharing is reasonable (and I have no reason to believe it’s not).
I mean, I’m not going to pay that sort of money on a wallpaper (I almost always use photos of family or friends anyway). But if the people who buy it like it, and the people who sell art for it are treated well, you go MKBHD.
I use my phone without a case too, phones don’t break that easily. I even dropped it on stone tiles once when I missed my pocket and it only got a few scratches on the side from that.
There are infinite list of things and services that are way too expensive for me to even consider buying but I also don’t go around complaining about them. Move on guys… If you want free wallpapers you can try one of the other 9000 free wallpaper apps available. This is recreational outrage.
50/50 cut is borderline predatory. It should be 30/70. It feels like marques is so out of touch with common people.
Removed by mod
He is fronting money for development. Which is not cheap.
Once dev cost stabilizes, I would love to have a better split for artists.
Removed by mod
Spoken like a true non-developer.
I feel this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but if you want unique wallpapers, consider paying an actual artist, instead of an influencer
If I want a unique wallpaper I go on a walk in the great outdoors and take a picture
most unique things outdoors are photographed already
$50 a year for wallpapers or I could go to wallhaven and get millions for free?
The wallpapers are nice but the website is hideous and unusable.
Edit: typo
Which side?
Typo, my bed
(intentional this time, it’s late)
Good night😴
The “shares its profits with the artists” part is relevant here.
Did he disclose an amount?
5% to artists is very different than 40% to artists.
Or is he adopting the Spotify bottom line?
Only pay artists after X downloads and only pay a few cents after thousands of downloads and use the rest for profits
It’s 50%, which is honestly quite low
It would almost be cheaper to commission an artist frankly.
Almost is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.
For a single piece sure.
I presume the idea here is that you have access to their full library. Personally, I fail to see why I would change my wallpaper enough to warrant even a free app to change it, let alone 50 bucks.
Paying for ANY wallpaper is just silly, much less a subscription model.
The only time you should pay for one if it’s an artist you want to actively support and/or thank for that specific work.
For the last 30 years, they’ve been trying to charge for dumb shit like wallpapers, screen savers, mouse cursors.
Who are these people who buy them? And what’s wrong with you?
ringtones baby
When toy story came out, i saw this toy story pc game. I put all my money together just to then find out that it wasn’t a game, it was a cd rom with like 12 wallpapers on it.
I would cry so hard.
Muzei - a free wallpaper changer on f-droid
It has many sources for images, like NASA APOD, masterpieces, NatGeo, Ghibli and others.
My phone has a camera… i can set photos as wallpapers…
deleted by creator
No offense but I wouldn’t pay $49 for that. Maybe $48.75, but not $49.
This guy is no different than every other smarmy “Tech Reviewer” on YT. His reviews have been borderline useless for the last few years. This is just the next logical step that these guys take - hitch themselves onto a tech accessory or app and charge their followers predatory prices - fuck this guy.
It’s kind of a paradox when you think about it. Good reviewers are often just regular people with a passion for tech but as they become more popular and prolific they become part of the industry itself. Once that happens even if they try to stay objective and critical their perspective is so different from regular people that reviews are just part of the sales and marketing strategy rather than pro tips from an enthusiast.
Homie spreads apple propaganda like aids, he’s an awful tech influencer
He is quite harsh on Apple for someone who gets exclusive access. In this video he is talking about how nothing has changed, barely considered an update and that the new things dont even come with the phone.
It costs $49.99 per year (or $11.99 per month)
Why in the hell does the monthly price end with you paying 280% more than the yearly. That is such an absurd discount I don’t even know why someone would pay at all for this app but more so I want to understand where the price justification is and who came up with this plan.
To be clear I support artists and more than welcome a platform for them to share and sell art if they wish… I don’t get why it needs to be a subscription service and I don’t see how such inflated charges are going to help artists as it’ll just discourage large numbers of people wanting to support them.
Short version: there’s an $80 bread maker with 5 features, a $120 bread maker with 12 features, and a $475 bread maker with 14 features.
The $475 bread maker only exists to make the $120 version look like a bargain.
Also the nature of a wallpaper app, maybe you just want to plop in get a wallpaper and scamper off into the sunset.
Matter of fact for the $50 a year price I could sign back up for a month twice a year and still come out on top.
I believe this is called the anchoring effect in psychology, and it’s really effective
Probably because you can pay for a month and download all the wallpapers and cancel.
I want to understand where the price justification is
The justification is that people should be yearly subscribers when they can more easily forget to cancel it.
I’ve never liked this guy, he just always felt like a smarmy asshole each time I tried to watch him and he shilled Apple stuff way too hard for my liking. Blocked his channel and several channels that collabed with him and was mostly able to ignore his existence. Doing something shitty like this kinda adds confirmation to my perceptions of him. What an out of touch douche move.
