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Chatbot (aussie.zone)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world
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[–] 58 points 11 months ago (19 children)

Imagine having 79 unpaid users for every subscriber. Most companies would die from embarrassment.

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  • [–] 42 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    It's like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft don't exist.

    Let's say it together, kids: "If the service is free, then you're the....?"

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  • [–] 14 points 11 months ago (8 children)

    What's a normal amount? What proportion of people with Dropbox or Google Docs or Hotmail are paying customers?

    Having a little over 1% doesn't seem that bad, I am faar more surprised that over 1% of users pay for ChatGPT (if your numbers are accurate).

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  • [–] 16 points 11 months ago (7 children)

    What proportion of people with Dropbox or Google Docs or Hotmail are paying customers?

    Dropbox is nice enough to list it.

    They have 700m users, and 18m of them pay for the service, so about double of OpenAI. Completely unlike OpenAI, however, they make quite a bit of profit, having a revenue of 2.55b and 1.63b in operating costs. OpenAI subscribers can't even cover their own cost of inference.

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Thanks for the numbers, you were saying the subscriber percentage was embarrassing so I was curious about that rather than their fairly infamous losses.

    You've said OpenAI have about half the subscriber percentage of Dropbox, but if Dropbox is that profitable then that seems like they are doing particularly well and perhaps that subscriber percent is above average?

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  • [–] 12 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    Peope don't usually compare OpenAI with Dropbox, but Dropbox isn't particularly great with the free-to-paid converion rating. 2.6% is pretty bad, but they STILL manage to make money because what they do is pretty cheap on a per-user basis. They just host data, and most of that data isn't really used much. Also, I don't know if Dropbox is "that" profitable. All I could find is that their revenue exceeds their operating costs, but I don't know if that covers R&D or marketing, which they probably spend a LOT of money on.

    Comparisons with YouTube and Spotify get thrown around a lot more, which convert around 5% and a whoppingly insane 36%, compared to OpenAI's measly 1%. And both YouTube and Spotify actually make a LOT of money on their "free" users, via ads. OpenAI has no monetisation beyond subscribers, and they're very bad at getting people to pay for their stuff.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    Yeah that's a fair point. I don't think Dropbox does ads but the others I mentioned and the ones you mentioned all show/play ads for the free tier.

    I guess OpenAI will be pretty keen to get ads into their free tier too, once they run out of investors' money.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    however, they make quite a bit of profit

    Pretty sure they didn't for a while. It's the same approach as always. Operate at a loss, gain (nonpaying) users, maybe sell or use their data and slowly turn up whatever you are doing to make money (ads, fee).

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    I’d rather not imagine being Spotify. Feels gross.

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  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago* (3 children)

    Spotify has 280m paid users, out of 780m monthly users. Roughly 26 times better conversion than OpenAI

    https://investors.spotify.com/financials/default.aspx#quarterly-results

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    TIL. Holy shit, that’s wild.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    tbf Spotify is easily the best subscription I've got, according to my wrapped I was listening to the equivalent of 82 days straight in the last year

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

    Glad you're enjoying it, that's awesome. I used it a decade and more ago, but Spotify never worked out for me for a few reasons:

    • I discovered hi-fi music, have multiple good setups and for years Spotify was lower quality. It took them close to a decade to do FLAC quality.

    • I listen to a large variety of stuff from multiple countries, and Spotify would often lose rights to tracks I liked. At one point something like 10-15% of the music on my list disappeared.

    • I prefer to own my music in high quality, have bought a ton of albums and have around 1.2 TB of FLAC on my NAS.

    • I don't like how artists get completely screwed on pay by Spotify.

    My home setup has multiple budget hi-fi setups with passive speakers and mini-amps, and a 5.1 system in my living room. I've got a mini-PC server that runs Lyrion with Bliss mix plugin, Plex (for PlexAmp), and AssetUPnP. I still have Qobuz for streaming and discovery (and it integrates in Lyrion to mix with my local collection), but prefer local music overall.

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