[oliverjanssen]

Advertising: Zero paid advertising so far. All organic - App Store search, word of mouth, a few blog mentions. First HN post and review in German print Magazine helped a lot.

Subscription journey: Started with one-time payment, but hard to justify ongoing development time. Switched to subscription. Not everybody was amused.

First model was freemium – one playlist with max 10 tracks for free. Felt too limiting for new users trying to understand the app.

In December I changed it: all features free to explore, unlimited playlists, all content. Subscription only kicks in when you open the audio player – with 1 month free trial. Since then, good numbers daily with users worldwide. Feels more honest and converts better.

[hbcondo714]

What was the level of (development) effort switching to subscription?

[oliverjanssen]

Not too bad technically – Apple handles most of it with StoreKit. Maybe a week of work for the initial implementation: setting up products in App Store Connect, handling purchase flow, receipt validation, restoring purchases.

The harder part was deciding on the model. Freemium limits? Trial length? What to lock? I changed this multiple times. The code changes for each iteration were small, but the decisions took longer.