• Wispy2891@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    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?

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      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.