teo wrote:

We've decided to remove the subscription option for Advanced Accounts and give everyone access to these features. We no longer need to charge for this and feel everyone would be happy with the extra features.

To everyone who has subscribed to Discogs Advanced, THANK YOU!! Your support has helped us make it this far. All of the money from subscriptions not yet expired will be donated to a charity.

Thanks all and enjoy the extra features!

mawiles wrote:

Thanks a lot teo !!

META wrote:

Great, way to go!

comkai wrote:

SWEET !
just logged in and asked myself who sponsored me an advanced account...
THANK YOU !!!!

*off to add a monster pile of 2nd copies*

DeathPosture wrote:

Coolio. I was just about to renew mine.

Wjiik wrote:

Thanks!!! Great!

Zyron wrote:

Really nice, thx teo!

gmos wrote:

glad I didn't bother renewing mine last month :P

Bissia wrote:

That is nice!

Bissia wrote:

{now i need to figure out what these feat. and green/red balls are there for…i don't remember}

gmos wrote:

green means in collection, red means you want it

deejsasqui wrote:

Wow - the ads really pay out that well? Or was it some crafty blackmail scheme to keep certain information out of Discogs? =)

Polynomial-C wrote:

Awesome. Thank you so much teo :)

V-12 wrote:

Pretty cool thing! I was wonder why I see some changes at the site but now I know what happened, thanx!

mawiles wrote:

teo's finding more efficient ways to get the money ^^

new marketplace feature: Market Price History

MONK wrote:

yay!

solefald wrote:

does it mean no more stupid advertisements???

skatedawe wrote:

yes! How wonderful. This was like a gift to me. :) Thank you all discogs dev's.

arjen wrote:

Hurrah!

skanzee wrote:

Thanks guys, that's nice of you :)

la-voie-du-sabre wrote:

All of the money from subscriptions not yet expired will be donated to a charity

i disagree, i'd rather have a refund or a free subscription to price history.

i renewed a month ago and now i have to pay to make real use of the price history feature in marketplace?

advanced accounts for free? fine, top-notch. but since future follow-up features and options seem not (not very charitable), i'm against my payment given out to anybody else than it was originally meant to.

Random_Tox wrote:

Yeah, I was this --| |-- close to buying advanced. I'm glad I get it free, but I'd be miffed if I had made the purchase. I suggest it would be fair to at least credit the subscribers seller accounts.

SirTweak wrote:

May I ask which one?

quantasm wrote:

Can you please donate my fee to VA... Vinylholic Anonymous

Thank you.. I expect a refund

quantasm wrote:

What was once practicable is now practical?

james_bland wrote:

I think that information like this needs to be sent out via email or to peoples inboxes as its quite an important update. Not everybody checks the forums, so getting the info emailed to you (depending on your preferences) seems to make a lot more sense to me. Perhaps a news update for Discogs??

Iron_Fist wrote:

Come on guys it's only 12 freaking dollars ! Millions of poor people need it more than you !! It's sad to read those comments...

MONK wrote:

where are the folders?

MONK wrote:

lol iron fist, you don't really believe the donation crap teo wrote?

wrote:

I find it ironic how there are always people complaining, even if they just received the news that something they were paying for has become something free. I'm curious what the reaction would have been if Teo announced the price for going advanced had been doubled.

MONK wrote:

haven't payed before it! tried it one month, found the features completely useless.

Stormbringer wrote:

The green/red dots are awesome!!! I really like em' to be back when I'm browsing the labels.

simonsays42 wrote:

wow that's really awesome! thanks teo!

la-voie-du-sabre wrote:

c'mon man its only my $12, budgeted as discogs' fees and nothing else. i don't care what opinion you have on me if i decide not to give these $12 to this charity





that's not the point. read my post above, i do think it's great news that advanced have been, at last, made free. the question is i paid for a service over a certain amount of time; this service is no longer invoiced so what did I pay for?

a charity? i disagree

Ultravod wrote:

Wow. That is awesome, Teo.

I've been a donor since, uhh 2003, I think. I enjoyed the advanced features, but the point was more to support discogs. I do hope this means there will be no ads. The main reason I paid was to avoid their clutter on pages. 0_o

...and all you haters complaining about a charity donation? Give me a break. He could have just as easily used it for server maintenance and been fully in his rights. Donating it to charity is a classy move.

Kergillian wrote:

It's not your money any more. So you actually have no decision in the matter :)





You paid for a service. You're still receiving said service. It's not like they REMOVED the service from everyone. If you buy a product and the next week they chop the price by half, are you going to bitch at the store to give you a refund? Not bloody likely.

Get over it. It's not exactly a world-ending announcement. Good on them for opening this up to everyone, and as long as the charity ain't PETA (-grin-), I'm glad to give my remaining $6 to charity (though if there's any choice in the matter, I'd like it to be donated to some form of cancer organization...)

wrote:

WOW, this made my day! It was uber shitty till now.

fleshmeatdoll wrote:

i take this as a sign of the coming apocalypse.

pano4423_004 wrote:

Kergillian, Horoma, Iron_Fist: thumbs up
la-voie-du-sabre: thumbs down

wrote:

Oh yeah, I had payment till Feb-2008, but donate it how you like guys.

Chalk up a Thumbs Up for me too.
:)

Ultravod wrote:

Might want to update this page. 0_o

555xtrafunk wrote:

I signed up for a SECOND advanced account a few days ago. So that was pretty bad timing :(

Vaganzza wrote:

Thanks! There will always be bad timing for some members. But I do appreciate what you did!

Conceited_2 wrote:

great, thumbs up!

vargind wrote:

what's the point of the advanced features? favourites list? people paid for this?

I thought there was advanced search where you could search track title for example ??

djCan wrote:

that's smart, thanks!

gmos wrote:

you can do that anyway

e.g. search for: track: "House Nation"

nik wrote:

I've updated the help section regarding this feature.

Check out the functions at http://help.discogs.com/wiki/AdvancedGuide - there are five aspects to it, Favorites, Discogs Alerts, Tracking Multiple Copies of a Release, Collection Folders, and In My Collection / Wantlist Indicators (Green / Red Dot)

We are looking at what charity or charities to donate to, but it will be some type of international / global humanitarian cause or causes.

la-voie-du-sabre wrote:

ok, nearly no one gets my point, fair enough. i'm not specially known for being a miser or a tight-ass but i'm just baffled how questions of principle get dealt with here nowadays.

i've always willingly subscirbed to discogs advanced feature because i thought it was useful and another means of supporting this site i've been using and enjoying since the early days.

once again, i was questioning the legitimacy of using my nearly one-year subscription fee for anything else than originally intended, plus asking me to pay, besides, for a new feature.

i guess charity and over-enthiusiastic noobs get it all. me a hater? give me a fucking break. all those who've called me such can get a spade and go digging that missing chromosome of theirs.

nice to see how debate is open.

Kevlar_aka_Teflon wrote:

Sweeeeeeeeet :D


Thanks man!

inexpressible wrote:

i perfectly get your point, lvds.

on the other hand i have to say that i, personally, don't care about the change (and the money i "lost") that much.

i think the advanced account was a good thing, and i've been an advanced member for the last few years.

i'm fine with the situation, as long as i don't have to look at ads (other than the links to amazon, etc.) from now on.

555xtrafunk wrote:

Please no religious based ones. Given that I forked out another 12 buck a few days ago, I would really like to see this not end up with a charity with ANY religious affiliation.
Also, just out curiosity, when I updated and paid my $12 for a second advanced account a few days ago, was this already slated? Or was this concieved, and decided on within the last few days?

inexpressible wrote:

2nded.

k.felgerman wrote:

Thanks. This is generous.

james_bland wrote:

I would like to see the money go to Greenpeace. They are a worldwide organisation. Btw how much is left over to donate?

james_bland wrote:

"Priority Web Request Queue - during periods of high traffic our load balancing software will service your requests before the others, guaranteeing you the fastest possible page loads"

Also how does this work now that we are all advanced?

phish63 wrote:

i think it should go to some type of group that supports musicians with ilnesses (if such animal exists).

inexpressible wrote:

bob moog foundation?

Kergillian wrote:

It's not your money any more, so what is done with it is beyond your decision. You've paid for a service but you don't have any say on what is done with the money once it's paid. If Discogs made a charitable donation but didn't cut the Advanced fees, and your fee money may or may not be included in it, would there even be a complaint here?

Once you purchase something, the money is not yours any more, and you have no control over it or how it is used - there was no disclaimer saying 'this money will be used exclusively to pay for Discogs' bandwidth and server upgrades', so teo can do whatever he wants with it.

doctor_trance wrote:

A little secret:

While I never had the big green dots and advanced features, for some reason, my safari browser never showed me the ads. I was actually shocked one day when I logged in under Firefox and saw all the ugly ads!

artgravity wrote:

Thanks for sharing the wealth, Teo. I never minded supporting Discogs by paying for an advanced account. It is great to hear that things are going well.

The_Shark wrote:

I just did :(

The_Shark wrote:

no adds, multiple records of the same type in one collection... and it's only 12$ a year, so why not pay for it.

MONK wrote:

yeah the ads are gone for logged in users. now that is a nice move.

SeRKeT wrote:

thankyou very much Teo , these features will save me lots of time

BUNKERHEADZ wrote:

I heard Osama Bin Laden could use some funds....on the other hand, ta Teo.

@ LVDS - I still luv ya bro ;)

la-voie-du-sabre wrote:

i didn't expect less from you bunka but thanks for writing it down ;)

kergilian, to cut a long story short (and to avoid any sterile legal argument), discogs' history has often been one-sided. i think oggers - past, present and future - give a lot: time, money, support, promotion.. enough anyway to deserve a little payback, whatever the form it may take.

i'm not talking about the priceless database, we fucking built it ourselves. i'm not mentionning all the cool peeps we might have met, because we decided to communicate, exchange and make the place something else than a stalinian music library.

discogs, like any other site, is a tool. a brilliant one coming from a not less brilliant spark of kevin's brain. he built it. but without all us leprechauns, the whole thing just wouldn't exist. i've agreed paying tax, a modest one regarding advanced fees and a fair one on marketplace. now i'm being told to rejoice about my tax given to some association formed for charitable purposes. good. why not start with our own community. or will i get rebates on discogs if i send copies of donations to such organisations?

like i was writing elsewhere, questions of principle are currently being bent on discogs. it's one-way authority and decisions to which you must submit less you want to be scolded at left and right. it's not because 90% is legitimate that you should accept the 10% that seem unfair.

this free-advanced-for-the-people is an example. but it wasn't thought over and implemented over the week-end. so it might have been fair to tell oggers who were about to renew. not wanting to mix subjects but, by then, surely marketplace had fueled enough funds to make such a charitable move. actually, maybe charity was already an obsession in some people's dreams 3 months ago.

but charity is not always altruism

wrote:

I agree, why not spend this money on new servers or bandwidth?





Thats a shitty attitude considering the spirit in which many users paid for their advanced accounts. I always assumed that my Contribution helped towards reducing Site slowdowns, server and bandwidth problems rather than

wrote:

^charities

royb0t wrote:

As far as no ads go, I'd use Firefox and have the Adblock Plus and Adblock Filterset.G extensions so it removes all kinds of ads and banners scripts off pages. Myspace looks so bare, but it's so good.

But back on topic, that's nice to give it out to everyone! I guess I don't have to worry about next March updating my subscription.

How about St. Baldrick's or Global Music Project as far as charities go?

andya wrote:

i worked in refugee camps in east africa in the mid-90s and i recommend giving it to oxfam and médecins sans frontières, as they really are the best in what they do.

Kergillian wrote:

It's still a company/organization owned by someone. Yes, it was opened publicly andbuilton the backs of its users - but everyone has freely given their time and energy because they wanted to, and because the ends justified the means, so to speak - the database/marketplace/forums are usefulto the users who helped to create them.

Nobody put a gun to your head and said 'work or else! chat or else!' So the 'we bled for you and you're not repaying us for our work fairly' attitude is bogus.

I spend a hell of a lot of time on this site and all I expect is for my work is the satisfaction of using the site knowing that I've been a part of it. I came into this with the 100% realization that it was all user-built but the coffers overall were in the cargo hold of one or two people alone.

And I don't give half a damn. I'm obviously not doing it for the money.

I paid my twelve bucks to support the site and gain a service. What they do with the money is their business. To think that every cent paid to Discogs has gone back into Discogs is ridiculous. If teo wants to use the Discogs money to buy a car, so be it, as far as I'm concerned. It's his bloody business, I've no qualm with how he spends his profits.

As long as I continue to get the full year's worth of the service I paid for, the status of this service for other people means nothing to me. If they'd CANCELED the service, that would be different altogether.

If you don't like it, nobody's forcing you to stay here...




I think it's pretty awesome that they opened up the service to everyone - they certainly didn't need to and could have continued to charge people and rake in a little extra cash, no matter how little or much it is (and I, for one, would have kept paying)

And they could have spent it on beer and drugs. Or rent. Or said they were using it for the site and not done it. Or whatever else. So to use it for something that could make a difference to somebody else is, if not altruistic, certainly a better use than lining MY pockets. Or yours.





How is it a shitty attitude to say 'I paid you this for a service and now it's your money do with it as you will'?

The shitty attitude is 'you guys suck because I'm no longer special by paying for special services and you won't refund me'.

They bought new servers and have now dealt with bandwidth and slowdown issues to the point where they don't need subscriptions to keep funding them. If anything, that's a good sign on the growth of the marketplace and success of the site.

How about applauding them for providing all 'oggers with a useful tool, and for not celebrating by spending the money on Bombay Sapphire...?

Beyonder26 wrote:

i would prefer the ones above or the World Wildlife Found (WWF) myself.

corne_mo wrote:

I kinda agree with la-voie-du-sabre. And I think it's not this one example that made him write the posts above. I more or less have the same feeling as he has:


It's this feeling I recently had an e-mail discussion with nik about. The site has grown very fast last year, and where I had the feeling that earlier a lot of new ideas were first discussed with the community (or were innitialized from the community), now everything is implemented without any discussion or with much less discussion.
According to nik this site is too big to discuss new ideas with the community. Imo this site is nothing without its community and the CEO's kinda have lost the feeling for this. I especially had that feeling when nik said that he couldn't check and respond to topics in the Discogs Development forum as there are too much posts and he's too busy implementing other ideas. What the hack is that forum for anyway???

I think that out of respect for all people that have donated to this site nik and teo must give them the choice to what must happen with the money they've paid for their advanced accounts.

Vaganzza wrote:

Idd why don't we invest this money so discogs will work even better and faster.

la-voie-du-sabre wrote:

no one's forcing me either, yet, to go

amazing how you keep on coming back at me with the same blank bullets and obviously ignoring my detailed points. seeing when you joined oggs and the time you've spent here, i'd advise you against patronising me, let alone telling me what this site is about. stick to moderating since there's the RSG crutch for you to rely on and wave franctically in the air.

and however willingly, obviously, we've all built this place, it's still the result of our work. we're not asking for shares, just a little consideration and fairness.

now, if you still have trouble reading and understanding my words, the little soldier in you can take a flying fuck and limp off moaning and lamenting to mods, eds and gods.

i won't post anymore in this thread since i've made my point clear to most and have a feeling that it's on the verge of getting flamingly off-topic.

nik wrote:

Rather than keep the leftover money, or go through a complicated refund procedure, we thought it would be a cool thing to donate it to a good cause, and people would be happy with that. I don't see what the problem is with this, but I am sorry if anyone feels it's a bad move. I suppose we can't keep everyone happy all the time :-/

corne_mo - I think you have the ideas and my replies to them wrong. The site has always been a balance between discussion and doing. I love discussing things, but also sometimes decisions just need to be made and things need to move forward, otherwise we can spend years pouring over every detail of the site, and of course never ever reaching a consensus. I have to try to balance feedback from them I receive in emails, PM's, and other non-forum communications as well, as not everyone is an avid forum debater.

It would be great to spend more time discussing developments, but we already have a bunch of important developments backed up and waiting to be finalised / rolled out. Going from an idea to reality is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. Hopefully the really good ideas rise to the top and get done. If everything had been discussed in minute detail before doing, this site would probably still be at the planning stage, rather than where it is now.

urbazon wrote:

hey, I have an idea... let's sponsor my music to be finally released? :D LOL
(just kiddin') :)

but, while we're at it... maybe (not now, but sometimes in future) Discogs could help people at "Music Production" forum? ;)

gmos wrote:

:)

Kergillian wrote:

Ignoring the insults (because apparently disagreeing with you and and pointing out flaws in your argument is the same as 'ignoring your finely detailed points')I will only respond to this:




1) You have no idea how long I've been here. Just because the tag on this account says joined in early-2006 doesn't mean I never set foot on this site before then. I've been using the site for quite a bit longer, just not as an official fanclub member.

2) And either way, what does that have to do with my opinion on the matter? Seniority doesn't make one's opinion as a member of the community more or less valid. There are others on this thread who have been here as long or even longer than you who are perfectly fine with the charity deal. So where does that leave us...?

Anyhow, my opinion isclear. I'm out on this subject.

pano4423_004 wrote:

@Kergillian: you have all my support for everything you've written. Whenever I read people flaming at each other in the forums I usually agree partially with every person on each side, but in this case la-voie-du-sabre is SO wrong... I couldn't agree more with you in your previous posts. Actually, when I was reading them I just thought: "wow, I could've written that myself" (had I the English level required, of course).

Cheers!

binaryme wrote:

Someone will always complain. For what it's worth I reckon it's a good idea, if the Marketplace stuff is making enough for the site to continue without ads.

royb0t wrote:

With the extra money, let's make a one-off official Discogs record label and release this. ;)

Qpchan wrote:

thxx for the "all advanced feature" for everyone !!! top decision !

Good decision too for the charity but maybe not the best as everyone will not agree (many oggers already give to charity, I'm sure of that ;) )
what about using the money for a Discogs involved project, CD compilation or Discogs designed T Shirt ..project that would be offered to all the ex advanced account users & that could be available to all others in the marketplace for a cool price
=)

pawlick wrote:

Thank you. That is great!

mirkob wrote:

Nice :-)

IntelliGiant wrote:

Hey! Where're the ads??? Seeing them I was sure the Discogs will may run forever! But now... As someone has told - ain't this an apocalypse?

Maybe Discogs's got some other sources to run, I hope... But...

inexpressible wrote:

Marketplace.

MONK wrote:

i want discogs slipmats and a t-shirt!

inexpressible wrote:

I want Discogs.

quisquilia wrote:

I want a life. :-P

royb0t wrote:

I want a promo copy of life.

Qpchan wrote:

slipmats would be THE most in demand item for sure =)
(and there's no size problem...)

urbazon wrote:

I want! :D




really, why not make 'something more' out of Discogs? it's all about music, right? ;)
:D

royb0t wrote:

In all seriousness I think it'd cause more of a headache to try to put out a compilation or sponsored project with arguments of what to include, compiler bias, and so on, I can only imagine.

But I'd certainly be in for official Discogs merch like a Discogs slipmats, t-shirts, dj record bag, cd binder... there's probably a hundred music-related products that many would be down for acquiring with a nice, official Discogs logo.

But if charities are the final call, how about letting the previous users who paid for advanced accounts to choose one from a dozen charities so we can select where the money we originally invested with Discogs would go.

Ekki0815 wrote:

Does that mean there is a new sponsor behind that all?
I'm only a bit concerned cause of some big deals in the last months (youtube...), I would not begrudge that to all discogs-participants to earn some money for that great site, it only interests me...

paultrautrim wrote:

Another vote for official Discogs merchandise here.

Lois wrote:

Bullshit @ @ everyone. Some special features for long term payer / payer.

doctor_trance wrote:

t-shirt ideas:

They shrank my submission limit and all I get is this lousy t-shirt

F@#! Mods

I prefer Ogs to sex (would be a huge seller here for all the dorkos)

^as above

I'm a mod, dammit!

(on the front): Ogs* (on the back): Discogs

(on the front): FOgs* (on the back): I Fuckin' Hate Discogs

Schneckl wrote:

Here you have the chance to give something away for good (actually it is done for you so you don't have to bother). And what do you say?
I'd rather have more more more of all the useless stuff i don't need! Best produced by underpaid and unhappy people elsewhere.
And now tell me this isn't absurd.