[bmelton]

Their appeal is that they are community supported, which allows the radio programming to be commercial free and basically allows them to play whatever they think is good. It's a vast departure from mainstream radio programming.

That it seems offensive to you is frankly baffling me, but to each their own I suppose. Regardless, this is exactly the model that's worked for them for the past however many years and assuming this isn't a harbinger of things to come, will hopefully continue to work for them.

They provide a service that they could easily charge for (as evidenced by their success for this long) but choose to allow their service to run as cheap or free as they can get away with. They obviously aren't in it for the money, and knowing that, I should think it would take some of the distastefulness away.

[Mz]

Maybe you missed this comment of mine explaining my view (which posted about 15 minutes before yours):

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4050388

[bmelton]

I had missed it, but I don't know that it changes the gist of my response in any meaningful way.

You see this as somehow distasteful, or as 'begging', which just seems to me to be sour grapes that they're doing what you seem to be unable to. I don't mean that as intentionally mean, but again, this is the 'business model' that's worked for them for years, and apparently the same business model that hasn't worked for you.

Could they be doing it better? Sure. There's always room for improvement, but they deliver a quality product. In return for that, they occasionally solicit for donations. It's quite possible that they do all the things you've suggested. It's quite possible that they ordinarily run at a surplus, but haven't been raising actively, or haven't been receiving donations. It's possible that they've already sent an email to their user base and gotten a less-than-ideal response.

They're moving data centers, so it's possible that they ate up some of that surplus in the migration effort, which tends to get costly.

Either way, I don't personally see this as begging, and they've already hit their goal, which should help to reinforce how valuable the service is. That they aren't homeless, in debt or trying to file for bankruptcy shouldn't count against them.

[Mz]

I think you missed my point somewhere. I don't know how else to respond to this in a communicative way rather than combative. So I am just going to go back to my writing project for now.

Peace.

[bmelton]

Ditto, enjoy.