The Afterword

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  2. They say they have millions of readers.This may be true. But how many of those are dedicated regular readers and how many (like me) drop into the site once every other month or so when an article on an artist I like is advertised/promoted on FB/Twitter/Feedy/etc?

    I wouldn’t object to a small monthly donation for their trouble. But there’s an enormous leap from nothing for browsing to £5 per month. An encouragement to make a small donation of a pound (maybe), if taken up by even a fraction of those like me who welcome its presence but rarely read it would surely replenish the coffers?

    • Absolutely fine, thanks for asking. Last call for donations was quite a while ago and got the usual fantastic response but the key thing is that quite a few people now donate small amounts per month via PayPal which just about cover the monthly hosting costs so our coffer balance stays at much the same level. Tbh, even if those regular donations stopped, it would be some time before we’d need another injection (oooh, er, missus).

      This is a good opportunity to say another thank you to everyone who can stretch to a donation in these tough times as we can’t set PayPal to do it per donation. The site will always remain donations-only and please remember that NO ONE makes any money from the site – donations cover the monthly hosting costs, storage for the Podcast library and nothing else.

      We should add that our hosting provider, Birch, have held our price for a long time now, which really helps and is much appreciated.

      Your helpful and appreciative Mod Team

  4. I wouldn’t want to see them go under but as others have hinted, it’s a bit of a stretch to go from looking at an occasional article to suddenly paying a fiver a month. Wonder if anyone actually stumps up for the 12 quid model? I genuinely can’t see the value there I’m afraid.

  5. ‘Fraid they are doomed.

    Unless you are selling smack to the incurably naive or terminally desperate, it’s almost impossible to offer something for free only to try and start charging for it later.

    Like most people here, hardly ever visit – think the last time was when they ran a piece about English Settlement 18 months back. While might have paid a quid to read that, no way am I going to fork out a fiver a month for such a service

  6. Like others commenting above, I sympathise but I don’t feel I can do much about it. I’m a very infrequent visitor to their pages and I don’t follow any of the acts they champion, so in all honesty I’m not going to be a subscriber.

  9. Why do publications give away their content for free? I remember The Guardian being the first major newspaper to go online probably about 25 years ago and I have hardly bought a physical copy since. Now they beg me for money every time I visit their website and I feel a bit guilty. It’s a strange business model though.

    (I recently got a Times/Sunday Times subscription because they were offering them for 1 pound a month)

    • Not sure if it’s the same in Canada but over here the stories/articles for the “free” Guardian trickle in rather than be there all at once in the morning. Certain sections, like crosswords, never appear on free.
      After using free for a while, I decided that becoming a Supporter for a paper I have read for nigh on sixty years was the Right thing to do. A tenner a month gets me access to everything and minute-by-minute updates of Dominic Raab being made to walk the gangplank (hope those sharks are hungry.)
      A few years back I took advantage of the £1 a month Time/ST offer. It’s now gone up to £5.99 but I think it’s worth it to view things from outside the Liberal Bubble (and the Arts & Sports sections are, dare I say it, better than my old pal, The Grauniad.)

      • Guardian Paying Subscribers are more than a million, generating £76 million a year.
        I think The G is ok financially because, rather like Records v Spotify, people don’t object to paying ten or twelve quid a month rather than £2.50 a day (and twice that on a Sunday).
        Saying all that when I’m back in the UK I go out and buy a proper paper copy, sit down in the armchair and sigh wistfully.

        • It was always my understanding that the Gruan was bankrolled by a Trust (the Scott Trust iirc) in perpetuity. Know a lot of the money they used to do so in the past was siphoned off from a hugely lucrative second-hand car publication called (I think) AutoTrader, but that was sold off a few years back

          • The Guardian, thanks to Scott, will never go bust but their digital subscriber model does indeed turn a profit.
            It helps that their core audience is relatively wealthy middle-class who think twelve quid is less than a decent bottle of Gavi Di Gavi but there’s no doubt The Guardian read the runes very well indeed.

  10. Another very infrequent visitor to Quietus and I would probably donated £10 for 12 months but £5 a month? Not for me.

    @dai mentions The Guardian ^^^^^ and I have a soft spot* for that newspaper and donate a couple of quid at least every month.

    *As a striking miner in ‘84 it was the only newspaper I read because it was the only newspaper to report truthfully and factually during the strike.

  11. @Dai
    @Baron-Harkonnen

    Bought and read the Guardian daily from about 1975 to 1981 (when I left the UK) and then bought a copy every day I was back on holidays, business trips, etc.

    Moved to online after they launched their website, but kept buying the Sat edition for the first three or four years after I moved back to Ireland in 20213. Gave up doing so in around 2018 (all got a bit too w*** for my liking) although still look at the website every day.

    Like Dai, now subscribe to Times Online but that’s a story for another day

    • Got I hate that w word, and I don’t subscribe to that view. Either my dad or I bought it every day for about 20 years on and off, I even got the condensed version when living in Switzerland

    • The Guardian “all got a bit too woke?” (I assume the word in asterisks is woke anyway.) Really? OK well I hate the word too but a willingness to challenge the increasing bigotry of the right and its ilk are why I like the paper and is surely the point of it…

          • Happy to admit that there isn’t one.

            All of which doesn’t mean to say anyone should slavishly accept everything the paper says as gospel.

            Like the Mail, the Times and every other – for want of a better word – “popular” media platform, the Gruan has an axe to grind and an agenda to peddle.

            While I may no longer buy the paper, I still flip through it and read the occasional news story, op-ed piece or feature/article, I also scan other titles to get a more balanced perspective.

  12. I thought the OP would be referring to Q magazine. “AfterQ” as in “Afterword”. Very poorly written title, if you ask me. Misleading. Fake news, in a sense.

  13. So back to The Quietus. I for one will miss it should it fold.

    Where else would we be able to follow the stratospheric trajectory of the superb Nobody’s Heard of Me following their majestic debut ‘I’m So Far Up My Own Arse’?

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