Marques Brownlee, known as MKBHD, faced backlash over his new wallpaper app, Panels, due to its high subscription cost ($49.99/year) and concerns over excessive data permissions.
Brownlee acknowledged user feedback, promising to adjust ad frequency for free users and address privacy concerns, clarifying that the app’s data disclosures were broader than intended.
The app, which offers curated wallpapers and shares profits with artists, aims to improve over time, despite criticisms of its design and monetization approach.
$50 a year for wallpapers or I could go to wallhaven and get millions for free?
If you know an artist doing commissions that cheap they are depressed, desperate, or want to fuck you.
I’m an artist who has uploaded many of my works to wallhaven entirely for free online, alongside the games I put out and any other creative venture I’ve pursued over the years.
That part is problematic not relevant.
Did he disclose an amount?
5% to artists is very different than 40% to artists.
Or is he adopting the Spotify bottom line?
Only pay artists after X downloads and only pay a few cents after thousands of downloads and use the rest for profits
The wallpapers are nice but the website is hideous and unusable.
Edit: typo
It costs $49.99 per year (or $11.99 per month)
Why in the hell does the monthly price end with you paying 280% more than the yearly. That is such an absurd discount I don’t even know why someone would pay at all for this app but more so I want to understand where the price justification is and who came up with this plan.
To be clear I support artists and more than welcome a platform for them to share and sell art if they wish… I don’t get why it needs to be a subscription service and I don’t see how such inflated charges are going to help artists as it’ll just discourage large numbers of people wanting to support them.
Short version: there’s an $80 bread maker with 5 features, a $120 bread maker with 12 features, and a $475 bread maker with 14 features.
The $475 bread maker only exists to make the $120 version look like a bargain.
But in the end you get more feature for a higher price. In this case it’s the same app for different prices depending on time frame… not to mention the app has no purpose beyond finding a wallpaper so it only really has 1 feature.
The point is not whether there are more features. The point is to give you an incentive to go yearly, and in this case it’s a huge “discount” even though it’s in no way worth the monthly cost. The monthly plan isn’t meant to sell you the monthly plan. It’s meant to make the yearly plan look good.
I believe this is called the anchoring effect in psychology, and it’s really effective
I started to get worked up but then i remembered I don’t particularly care. He’s in it to make bank, not necessarily sell you a quality product. If he were, he wouldn’t be selling a wallpaper app.
Yeah it seems like a weird thing to get mad about. No one is forcing anyone to pay this guy for his wallpaper app. Keep watching his videos if you enjoy them or don’t. The wallpaper app seems as inconsequential as his DBrand shilling. I watch his reviews every year and I’ve never bought anything from DBrand lol. Mostly because the products look like shit tbh.
Apparently one of the wallpapers is just solid orange. It’s called “Orange”, is labeled as “abstract”, and is labeled with a copyright.
It’s a solid orange rectangle.
Perhaps more likely years of work with colour and colour theory preceding a quick output of some content? Why the sarcastic tone?
That is a measure of exactly nothing.
https://www.nme.com/photos/30-minutes-or-less-19-famous-songs-written-at-staggering-speed-1422651
Your post makes it very clear that you have little experience in the creative world. There is no linear measure of successs or quality. You do a great disservice to those toiling with their creativity by making comments such as this one. We need artists, they are fragile things and should be treated with care.
I didn’t start this post planning to get hetup but I do feel that taking umbrage to your comment is fair, if not tautological.
I would encourage you to labour over a still life or wrestle a passable rendition of your favourite guitar riff. Try sing the first phrase of your favourite song in key. Trust me: none of those things are easy.
If you don’t like “Orange” then just look at something else and hold your tongue.
Wasn’t he also behind the redline icon pack (which I do actually like) but yeah subscription for something you can easily find your own images or even just ask an AI to make.
Subscriptions aren’t something I’ll ever buy into software wise and if they are offering an actual service it better be worth the money and give me more than an image.
