I understand what you're saying, and I agree: I pay for many services online and I'd be happy to pay for more if it meant the services I enjoy would get even better. Or wouldn't lose their souls to advertising.
But your $10/mo and my $10/mo aren't enough. It seems like the web-o-verse has spent the last twenty years desperately attempting to figure out how to charge money in a way that enough people will shell out the necessary cash. For the most part, it's been a failure. Most people seem uninterested in paying directly for digital content.
Any service built upon user-generated content -- like SoundCloud -- has an even worse path. If you charge from the start, you put up a huge barrier that will prevent people from ever using your service. But if you start changing after you've gathered up steam and have an active community, people will feel betrayed -- like you were just baiting them into using your service so you could pull the old switcheroo and force them to pay to access the community they built.
But your $10/mo and my $10/mo aren't enough. It seems like the web-o-verse has spent the last twenty years desperately attempting to figure out how to charge money in a way that enough people will shell out the necessary cash. For the most part, it's been a failure. Most people seem uninterested in paying directly for digital content.
Any service built upon user-generated content -- like SoundCloud -- has an even worse path. If you charge from the start, you put up a huge barrier that will prevent people from ever using your service. But if you start changing after you've gathered up steam and have an active community, people will feel betrayed -- like you were just baiting them into using your service so you could pull the old switcheroo and force them to pay to access the community they built.