A $50 App That Sells Free Wallpaper? YouTuber MKBHD Is Making Financial institution—And Indignant Followers

One entertaining factor about social media is it’s change into means simpler for critics to get criticized in public. Marques Brownlee, the YouTube influencer and tech reviewer often called MKBHD, is studying this the laborious means after launching his new cellular wallpaper app, known as Panels.

Persons are hating it. Loudly. The app, which was launched as a part of Brownlee’s iPhone 16 evaluation video, is awash in a flood of criticism from followers over its pricing, knowledge assortment, and perceived basic skeeziness.

Panels is designed to supply a curated collection of “beautiful full decision wallpapers” from digital artists. Nevertheless, the subscription mannequin—$49.99 per yr or $11.99 monthly—is alienating many amongst Brownlee’s 19 million-plus followers.

The dear Panels assortment consists of one that’s nothing greater than a strong orange background (good for Halloween, perhaps?); one other is a pixelated piano and a flat picture of a tiny individual strolling on a blue background.

The damaging reactions in Brownlee’s remark part had been… considerable, apparently topping 13,000 replies inside the first 20 hours. Folks didn’t actually appear to care in regards to the new iPhone, however they actually needed to know what he was fascinated by when he contrived the worth construction for his app.

“Nobody’s paying $50 a yr for a daily wallpaper app lil bro,” person MrUnknownXD commented to the tune of greater than 25,000 likes. “I ponder how insanely out of contact it’s important to be to suppose a $50/yr subscription for a wallpaper app is a good suggestion,” stated one other commenter.

Brownlee, who has beforehand ventured into product creation—most notably by collaborations with Ridge and Atoms—emphasised that Panels was constructed “from scratch.” The wallpaper is “all made by artists who can select to contain AI or not of their creation course of,” Brownlee defined to a person questioning the app’s worth. Plus, Brownlee identified that half of the income (after Apple takes its 30% reduce) would go to the wallpaper artists.

Up to now, the app has been downloaded over 10,000 instances on Android and is the second most-downloaded app in Apple’s Picture and Video part (which doesn’t present obtain numbers). A free obtain doesn’t imply that somebody then bought a subscription, nevertheless it’s a public stat price following—so let’s do some again of the envelope math:

With simply 10,000 folks subscribing, he’d make round $500k a yr, and on the larger finish, if 1.9 million folks—10% p.c of his base—subscribed, then he’d made almost $10 million per yr.

MKBHD stated he takes 50% of the income and offers 50% to the artists. So, that $10 million can be break up up between the App Shops who would get $3 million, then $3.5 million for MKBHD and collaborators, and eventually $3.5 million break up between artists featured within the app.

Not a foul haul for an orange backdrop.

Moreover the worth construction, customers additionally shared considerations in regards to the enormous quantities of information that Panels is gathering earlier than letting customers obtain jpegs. The checklist consists of location, contact data, native IP deal with, machine mannequin, cookies, native addresses, and extra.

Brownlee tried to calm the waters, mentioning that there’s a free tier for deadbeats; in fact, they would want to observe two unskippable advertisements earlier than downloading a single file in decrease decision. However there’s no such factor as a free lunch, proper?

He additionally promised updates for many who subscribed—which additionally performed towards his personal popularity, as he’s recognized to suggest shopping for merchandise for his or her present worth and never for what they promise. That was a key level that led him to name the AI Humane pin the worst product he has ever coated.

Sensible folks be taught from their errors in fact, and Brownlee didn’t get to be Huge Man on YouTube with out smarts. He shortly acknowledged the damaging suggestions and promised that the crew is working to handle the “extreme knowledge disclosures” and “dial again advert frequency” for the free model of the app.

Nevertheless, he doubled down on the $50 yearly subscription plan. “So far as pricing, I hear you! It is our personal private problem to work to ship that sort of worth for the premium model,” he tweeted. He additionally promised that the Panels app will “be fairly constantly bettering over time.”

Maybe a crimson background is within the works? We will solely dream.

Edited by Josh Quittner and Andrew Hayward