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Re:Show HN: Songcraft – Online Songwriting Platform and Guit... by xster on Wednesday March 20, 2019 @05:17PM (#19447038)
How do you address the market of 30-something hobbyist with kids and jobs etc who might have short spurs of creativity followed by very long inactive periods. They might want to pay to use all the features and become good with the tool for sporadic use but might be turned off to the idea of paying for months of the account being dormant. A one time price for an online license like Propellerhead Reason seems sensible.
Re:Show HN: Songcraft – Online Songwriting Platform and Guit... by ry-n on Wednesday March 20, 2019 @05:36PM (#19447207)
This. And somewhat discouraged by the seemingly imaginary 44% discount on the pricing page. Has 8.95/mo ever been the price? Is it going to be? Is this just a permanent gimmick? Without any details or explanation it seems disingenuous.

I also can't find any info about exporting data for backups or what happens to data if a subscription is paused for a period of time. Since it isn't called out my default assumption is that data is trapped and lost respectively.

Generally looks like something I'd love to use but would be great to clarify those points.

Re:Show HN: Songcraft – Online Songwriting Platform and Guit... by gabergg on Wednesday March 20, 2019 @05:49PM (#19447332)
This is very helpful feedback, thank you. In a couple places, I mention that the $4.95/mo rate (Launch discount) is for the first 3 months of your subscription before it changes to $8.95/mo. I need to make this more prominent, and I absolutely need to clarify the info on backups, plan-switching, etc.

I'm working on a FAQ, but I'll also leave some clarification here:

Songcraft Basic is always free, and your existing songs will never be locked or lost, even if you downgrade from Pro to Basic with more than 3 songs. You can always export any song as plain text.

Comparison info on the plans can be found at https://songcraft.io/plans.

Please let me know if you have other questions!

Re:Show HN: Songcraft – Online Songwriting Platform and Guit... by ChristianGeek on Wednesday March 20, 2019 @10:53PM (#19448930)
You really need to clarify the pricing quickly. As it is now, if I signed up for the $4.95 offer and it got changed to $8.95 after three months I’d be pissed.
Re:Show HN: Songcraft – Online Songwriting Platform and Guit... by gabergg on Wednesday March 20, 2019 @05:36PM (#19447206)
I wanted to launch with a simple pricing model, but I'm working on developing a longer term (annual/lifetime) plan to sit alongside the monthly one. I think that's an important point.

A user could also disable their subscription for longer periods of inactivity, but that's obviously not ideal for a regular but infrequent project (e.g. a couple days per month).

Re:Show HN: Songcraft – Online Songwriting Platform and Guit... by xster on Thursday March 21, 2019 @02:02PM (#19455374)
I think deactivating accounts etc works for some areas of productivity but the creativity is so fragile. When you're busy and you're choosing between turning on one more switch vs just not making any music today, a lot of people will just choose to not make music if there's any friction. That'll be exponentially more true if there's any account management and money involved in the choice vs a reverse sunken cost mentality.