this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024
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Can someone explain me what's the business model of an app that's free for three decades? They claim to have 100 devs, how can they pay them?
They're sponsored by WinRAR. Those guys are loaded.
Is this real?
No, sorry, it's a jab about how no one paid for WinRAR either.
WinRAR did make piles of money by focusing on the commercial market. They really didn't care if home users went past the free trial period, but they did care if you were a business.
I don't know what WinAmp does, or ever did.
Real player is more of an alternative to winamp, I was surprised to see real.com. So no...
I'm thinking no.
The current revived version appears to be tied to a content streaming platform for "creators," and also sells NFT's. The mothership certainly gets a cut of all of those sales. Just like seemingly every other techbro venture nowadays, their business model entirely revolves around being a "service," and the media player itself is apparently just a side hobby. (Note that this is basically exactly the same mutation that happened to Napster. That worked well.)
Otherwise, the answer is sponsorship by a corporate sugar daddy. Even the OG Winamp was sponsored by and then ultimately bought outright by AOL.
sells NFTs*