🎙️ AMA: From Rippple to Trakt

[kcador (Kevin)]

@kraftynic

I think it might be the other way round - if a Trakt VIP user signs up for the third party app, then the app gets money. I could be wrong though.

That’s right!

@kraftynic

But I think for Younify at least, there’ll be money going to them regardless as it’s a pretty expensive service and to cover the costs from just those using it would be pretty difficult.

I’m not sure about this one tbh. I’ll see if we can share more about this, maybe not but at. least know that your worry has been heard!

[kcador (Kevin)]

@terryapodaca

So wait, is Rippple now free for Trakt VIP members? Or would I still have to pay $9 for it?

Free for all existing and new Trakt VIP members, yes!
I only get “a cut” if new users come via the referral link.
You can still pay for Rippple directly (see it as a tip the dev) with or without Trakt VIP.
I (still) think it is a win-win-win situation

[kcador (Kevin)]

@jmxd

Listen, i’m happy for you. I actually used Serist for a long time before Trakt had its own app, it was a great app. But a “Product Management” role on Trakt is ridiculous. And so is believing in “Trakt’s mission”.

Seeing this whole thread, I can only disagree with you. But I’m biased obviously, I just hope Justin is not reading you

@jmxd

This is a simple website for selecting if you watched something yes or no

This is an over-simplification. And, if so, you can do it on the free plan.

@jmxd

using mostly data from Tmdb

Again, this is an over simplification. We enrich a lot and have community features that gives us our very now data. Also, TMDb is awesome (I’m also using their API) but why Trakt exists then?

@jmxd

The owners of this website have gotten complete delusions of grandeur recently. This website does not need 20 staff members and definitely doesn’t need a $60 subscription for selecting if you watched something (which btw is a larger price than a yearly subscription to one of the streaming platforms where you can actually watch the content)

I see Justin and Sean as down-to-earth as ever but I get your perception due to pricing and the fact you seem to only use and need the free experience.
We are not 20, the team has grown but not that much.
Again, if 60$ is too much for your usage (simple tracking), the free tier seems adapted.

[kcador (Kevin)]

@Skick3

The majority of Trakt users simply want to track their viewed content and possibly maintain lists.

You can track for free.
Lists are behind the subscription but you said possibly.

@Skick3

I also don’t understand why they don’t offer a VIP Lite for another $30.

We heard you and so far, the number of features provided by Trakt + the number of user with highly specific use cases = doesn’t work.
I promise you, we’ll have the same conversation about VIP Lite being too restrictive and VIP being too expensive.

@Skick3

All the discussions for weeks have been saying that lists are important for users.
Instead, Trakt users are running away to the ugly competitor Simkl, for example. The users who regularly brought in $15 or $30 a year are falling away. Less revenue and lists that VIP users kept up to date for the community will also become inactive. Which in turn makes Trakt less attractive to the competition.
With a restriction of 100 contents in a list and a maximum of 8 lists, you won’t keep any free users.
The result is less revenue because I haven’t read anyone who wants to keep paying $60 for Trakt.
And if you read that the $60 is necessary, then I really wonder why you don’t do a limited VIP model to keep the users, because you can add so many great features to VIP. $60 will not pay for it.

A lot of this is making a lot of assumptions. But I hear you: lists are important, price is too high, competitors do it differently.
Time will tell (for the most part).

@Skick3

The main focus of most users is tracking and maintaining lists. Everything else are goodies and should be offered as an add-on for money.

But then who is going to pay? Don’t get me wrong, I get your point, I’m teasing you a bit

[pauls67 (Paul)]

Are there any plans to make the services/apps in the partner program available to all, instead of just selected os’s/countries

eg

Is Ripple coming to Android, so more people can benefit from it?

Unify, one of the big issues with auto scrobbling from sites is that the item has to be available to US streamers, do you know of any plans to make Unify available to all and not just US customers, so we can all benefit with country specific items

[kcador (Kevin)]

@kraftynic

Reasons? It was just wiffle waffle about infrastructure which could mean anything (salaries, helping fund - excuse me, revenue share - external parties -, all these extra employees - I mean talk about excessive)! It’s certainly not because they’ve added extra features that users actually requested.

I’ll just say this: there is a limit between transparency and opening our books and business for everyone to see

@kraftynic

And STILL didn’t follow them properly by emailing all affected users of the changed date and giving 30 days notice as of the change.

Doesn’t change the fact that “it wasn’t the intention and Justin communicated about it”.

@kraftynic

Prime, etc up their prices at reasonable levels, NOT doubling fees overnight with nothing to show for it.

On what time scale, also, you are taking Prime as an example when Amazon is behind it with a lot more businesses to “fund” their streaming service. Take Netflix and Disney+ on a 15 year timescale.

@kraftynic

What an ignorant reply. You’d make a great politian with your ability to serve actually answering as to why it would be so difficult. Tiered wouldn’t be any harder than creating Trakt Lite (which no one asked for, by the way). Like I’ve said before, many services have managed to provide it, so is Trakt just incompetent or greedy?

What is ignorant about it?
I’ve answered why it would be so difficult many times.
You don’t know how much time it would take, I’d I’m not even debating that, I’m debating the actual tiering that would be different for every Trakt user of the forum.
You don’t know how much time Trakt LITE took to develop and comparing an exploratory and a playground for innovation as an additional front-end for Trakt services to pricing and tiering.
And how many services failed to do it properly? And what kind of services are we talking about?

[kcador (Kevin)]

@WereCatf

That’s the rub: I literally can’t think of anything I’d want that Trakt doesn’t already do. That’s why I can’t justify the increase from $30 to $60 and canceled – I wouldn’t be getting anything in return for paying more.

But you’ll stay as a free user?

[kcador (Kevin)]

I agree with a lot of what you are saying

[WereCatf]

Good question, but probably not. As non-VIP, I’ll lose access to advanced filtering and without that I can just replace Trakt with one of several self-hosted options.

It’s the advanced filtering which is the most useful function for me as I like to keep track of upcoming stuff that I may want to watch when it’s available. I’m not aware of any self-hosted option offering that in as practical form. Tracking of what I’ve watched and what rating I give them, on the other hand, is available.

[kcador (Kevin)]

How so? I’m not sure if this is a hint for me to stop.

[kcador (Kevin)]

Not trying to redefine anything. Just answering honestly and transparently. Sometimes trying to open another type of conversation. Sometimes failing (I guess).

[kcador (Kevin)]

Please share the contradictions. I’ll lear from it.

[otakunet21]

at this point you’re just not going to believe what he’s saying so why bother continuing to repeat yourselves. You have an opinion, and his answers refute your opinion. I’m more inclined to believe the person that works for a company than a customer who doesn’t have the insight into how the company is running things.

Obviously you’re opinions are strong, and i’m not saying they’re wrong or right. Just agree to disagree on some points and move on.

[otakunet21]

@ImpaktNY48

Move on to where?

you keep asking the same questions and getting the same answers. in your opinion nothing has been resolved but they’ve told us why the price increased.

@ImpaktNY48

dishonest

since you keep talking about what was said about keeping people grandfathered into their price, things change. circumstances change. If i tell you i don’t like horror movies and then six months later i love horror movies, that doesn’t make me a liar/dishonest. The circumstances that have changed we aren’t privy to, so you’re going to get semi-vague answers, just accept it even if you don’t like it. If you’ve already cancelled your service and are using another provider then why are you still here?

[great_vc (Vassilis)]

@kcador

Great question! I started developing in BASIC with my uncle (who was the one person helping me build a PC when I was around 13 to be able to play games

BASIC, on my ZX SPECTRUM, yes the original with the plastic keys

[kcador (Kevin)]

Hey all,

I’ve had a chat with the team. Here are some more information I can share:

Infrastructure

What we mean when we say infrastructure is mainly our databases. This is by far the biggest line on our cost sheet.

Price Increase

In 2022, Trakt’s was down due to a database crash. One of the actions the team took was to add redundancy to those databases to avoid data loss in the future and improve the general availability of the service. This had the effect of basically doubling that (already big) line on the bill.

Then there’s also salaries: Trakt has been getting new people on board across all disciplines. From support and moderation to design and UX going through engineering with web/infra to Android specifically. Trakt was reaching a size that just couldn’t be sustained by just Justin and Sean, even with the help of some contractors here and there. As mentioned in this thread, we are a rather small team for the size of the service. Removing people is not the answer here.

Pricing, Tiering & Grandfathering

I’m going to refer to this post by Justin (in Feb):

VIP Pricing
Why was the decision needed?
In 2015, we introduced two VIP pricing tiers: $30 and $60 per year. It is expensive to run Trakt, servers aren't cheap :sweat_smile:. We retired the lower cost plan because it just wasn't sustainable anymore.

You can go through the whole post, it explains a lot of things (imo). Maybe with the additional context I’m giving here it will better explain things.

The API Partner Program

The Partner Program is based on a referral link system and the Public API:

• Partners will get another level of access to the Public API,
• Users of those apps will get a better level of service,
• Partners will get a share ONLY of the VIP subscription of the new users going through the link,
• Existing VIP will get a bonus in the Partner app. This could be a free access or a promo — in Rippple I choose to give something my Premium for free, but it’s my choice as an independent developer and I’m sustaining that loss in revenue,
• Existing VIP (using or not the app) subscriptions are not shared with Partners

The Partner Program will be expended to include other third-party apps, including Android apps.

Younify and other Integrations

I’m going to talk about Younify as an example here because there was a focus on this thread about it but it applies to more core integrations.
I just wanted to clarify, after verification with the team, the following:

As for the API Partner Program, Trakt’s costs with Younify are usage based.

What it means is: as a user that does not use Younify, your VIP subscription is not used to fund Younify, in any way.

And to go back on some of the first points: this doesn’t mean we could easily have 2 paid tiers (we had that!): one with Younify, one without. The main part any VIP subscription covers is not Younify, regardless of usage, it is and will remain infrastructure.

---

I hope this clarifies and/or gives a better level of context on the issues at hand in this thread.

If you still have a specific question not answered, please and I’ll be happy to add the missing information if I can.

[neilcgardner]

@kraftynic

Prices now nearly inline with CONTENT/streaming providers for a lot of people when the basic “content” here isn’t even belonging to Trakt and it doesn’t offer a service anywhere near inline with those services.

I really don’t know how people get ‘streaming’ for $6/month from anywhere that offers something worthwhile. I pay over $115/m for my streaming services. Yes, they are the premium options, but I value quality. The Trakt subscription is noise for me, and I suspect many others.

[quietrain (Janner)]

Trakt works out at £48 ($60) a year, which is £4 a month. £4 is still a fair bit cheaper than £5.99. It would be a bit cheaper again, if the dollar to sterling exchange rate is what it was before Brexit.

[quietrain (Janner)]

@kraftynic

I wouldn’t say it’s a fair bit cheaper, not for what both services offer in comparison.

I agree. But you’re confusing value with price.

It would add a little value to Trakt if they started using TVDB for TV instead of TMDB, like Simkl does. Trakt only stopped using TVDB because they did not want to pay, which is kinda ironic considering how much they want to charge us now.

[quietrain (Janner)]

Agreed. And some can’t accept it either. This thread is still raging on a fortnight after the original announcement.