“As much space as you need” now has a specific size. It’s about 15 terabytes.
Dropbox has announced a change to its pricing plan. In the past, their “Advanced” plan promised unlimited storage. Now that storage is capped at 15 TB.
By way of explanation, Dropbox claimed that a small number of subscribers to their Advanced plan were abusing the service. Of interest to DJs, Dropbox grouped together cryptocurrency miners and other common pests of storage lockers with “unrelated individuals pooling storage for personal use cases.”
It’s not unknown for DJs to pool their resources and rent out a Dropbox account for backups. (Pooling storage not coincidentally also combines multiple people’s record collections, which was a pleasant perk for being diligent about backing up your tracks.)
The legalities of file sharing are well-established; sharing a Dropbox account on the other hand seems like a banal, normal thing to do. Apparently, account sharers were violating Dropbox’s terms of service all along.
Dropbox claims that the difference between “acceptable” and “unacceptable” uses is too hard to specify, so they’re just capping their previously unlimited Advanced plan, “sunsetting the ‘as much space as you need’ policy and transitioning to a metered model.”
The Advanced plan fit a niche, requiring a minimum of 3 users and costing $24/user/month (so a minimum of $72/month). That’s a little high for a single user but for a few professional DJs, it’s just about right. With the storage now capped at 15 terabytes, one can expect Dropbox will also be policing abuse of their terms of service
Don't Stay In
Get on our guest list for news from 5 Mag and you'll never miss a thing. It's free and we don't sell your shit.