On not having ads

There are no ads on this site, and there isn't going to be a paywall. No newsletter pop-up. No tracking pixel beyond the basic analytics that tell me how many people came through. The whole site loads quickly because there's nothing else in it.

This is partly principled and partly cheap. Hosting a small static site costs about as much as a coffee per month, and the playlists themselves are on Spotify, which isn't my cost to bear. There's nothing to support, so there's nothing to monetise.

What's lost by not having ads is real — I'd recoup the coffees, and a banner is hardly the end of the world. But the room a small ad takes up isn't really the ad; it's the change in posture. Once a site is selling you something, every page becomes a sales surface, and the whole tone shifts.

The site has a bio track in each room. That is the closest thing to an ad on the site, and it's a soft one — listen if you want, skip if you don't. Beyond that, the site exists because I wanted somewhere to put the playlists. The rest of the internet can sell you things; this small corner doesn't have to.