Atinkoriko wrote:Is it just me or have subscription prices jumped rather dramatically in just a few months? Here was I, a few months ago, weighing the merits of a Spotify subscription vs a LingQ subscription ($10/month) and now I’m being asked to consider paying $30/60 a month for Speechling, Glossika, Fluent Forever etc
Sorry -- my mistake. There is pricing on the page, just miles down, and it turns out $10 and $5 are the discounted prices, not the discount -- regular prices will be $12 and $6 a month. That's a bit of an odd pricing structure, to be honest... $6 is a very weird number and feels a lot higher than $5 than it really is, which could put people off. I strongly suspect the prices will change later, and that there will be a yearly payment option at a much rounder number... but that rounder number is likely to end up being very similar to the discounted price ($120 sounds sensible for a year, which is the same as 12*$10), so I hope the discount would also apply to that.
But my god this is mindbogglingly complex. I've tried to write this message about 3 times and keep getting in a knot. (Note that any prices mentioned below are the full price, not the Kickstarter/Indiegogo discount prices.)
The app is free. But using the free subscription, you can't add your own sentences to your own app. You can add sentences to the community database, but you can't actually view other peoples sentences. The free app allows you to review any sentences you have in the app at no charge, but you can't put any extra on. Yay.
It appears that if you want to add sentences to your app, you have several options:
1. Buy a $25 sentence pack from FF.
2. ]Type your own sentences into an app on your own phone, after paying $6 or $12 a month for the privilege. The justification for this is the cost of the image search; at $6 you are limited to 300 image searches a month (10 per day)
3. Get the sentences from the community database... again, after paying for the privilege. At the $6 tier you get 30 per month -- you have to pay $12 a month for unlimited access.
So essentially, your subscription is paying for the right produce your own materials and to get materials that other users have made
for free. Ouch.
Note also that the pronunciation trainer that is allegedly integral to the system is also an additional purchase at $12 (same as currently on the FF website), or you can buy a pronunciation+sentences bundle for $30.
So... wow. If you want to use it for basic SRS, you've got to pay $6 a month. Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez. I haven't found clear mention of how many sentences are included in a sentence pack. The community database is of dubious value at the best of times (how good is the curation really going to be if they couldn't adequately "curate" two sentences for the demo?) and initially it's going to be pretty empty -- how long will it take to build critical mass... if it ever does at all?
The more I look at it, the less appealling it gets.
But wait, there's more!!!
Crowdfunding campaign wrote:Initially, there were some legal concerns about our particular use of image search in flashcards, but we've already consulted with lawyers and it appears that providing URLs of images and caching those results locally on mobile devices is considered a form of Fair Use for copyrighted imagery. We've already programmed a Proof of Concept for our image search engine and so the technological hurdles have already been overcome.
Appears... right. I'd be very concerned about this, because if image search is one of the few things users are paying for, what the hell is the product...? Deliberately directing users to someone's site to download an image specifically for use not relating to the website isn't clearly and specifically illegal, but there's a whole host of side-channels to make this messy, like computer misuse legislation. The question of whether it's "unauthorised access" to download an image from a site without credit is one that could go either way, and I wouldn't like to be the test case.
And
another thing!
If they get to $850 000, they'll generously add in the ability to create community database sentences in whatever the hell language you like, even if FF don't offer any products in it, and I presume they will generously allow people to pay them $6/$12 a month for the privilege of accessing the free labour of their users for languages FF haven't produced a single sentence or sound file for! Their magnanimity astounds.
The whole community idea is worryingly similar in shape to a pyramid scheme -- people who've paid for their lifelong discount will feel invested and will advocate for the platform, as without new blood, the supply of new sentences will be limited. And as long as the supply of sentences is limited, everyone who is paying for it will be incentivised to try to drag more people in to create sentences.
But at the end of the day, what I really can't get my head round is the idea that you have to pay $6 a month just to type your own sentences in. That is crassly exploitative.