Comment by oliverjanssen
16 hours ago
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.
What was the level of (development) effort switching to subscription?
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.