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> Experience has proven time and time again that putting up paywalls just makes people go elsewhere. Isn't Spotify and Netflix evidence that suggest otherwise.

> Experience has proven time and time again that putting up paywalls just makes people go elsewhere. Isn't Spotify and Netflix evidence that suggest otherwise. All the music on Spotify is available for free on the so called dodgy sites. Torrents and whatnot. Heck, you can even listen to it for free on FM radio! However, literally millions of people choose to pay for Spotify - because it's worth it. The news is no different. If news content providers provide a useful service, millions of people WILL pay. My analysis is that millions of people avoid paying because news content providers don't sell news, they sell people. They sell their readers as fodder to the ad men. When that business model changes, people will pay for news.

oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
Publishers that have come to the web from old-school media are still failing to understand the medium. They take their print content, slap it up on a website (designed to replicate the look of a print newspaper!), surround it with ads, and expect it to behave in exactly the same way as hardcopy newspapers. It doesn't, for a myriad of reasons. I have experience of this world, having worked with old-school book publishers and old-media print journalists. They are way too entrenched in their understanding of publishing/journalism to make the change. The closest I've seen anyone get to something that might work, and they're still a long, long way off, is the Guardian. At least they understand that a) they need to provide additional content, suited to the medium (e.g. quality infographics, interactive data, etc.) and b) online advertising is not enough, but current paywall implementations are a poor substitute. Spotify is a great example to compare. If Spotify worked the same way as online news, you'd go to Spotify, browse through some skeuomorphic representation of a CD rack, get interrupted, find an album you like the look of, listen to the album with an obnoxious advert between each song, put it back in the rack, repeat. Is there a single newspaper that will allow me to even, for example, do something useful with their content by collecting it / tagging it / whatever for future reference? Will they let my contacts, or famous people, recommend content on a particular subject? Will they offer any kind of api for other publishers wishing to reference their material?
- lawik 10y ago
  Thought this would just be a rant against old media but the last paragraph surprised me. Yes, that would be interesting. Not sure if spotify for news would work but a single db where you could read up on most major publications content around a specific subject or search term, standard interface, could be amazing.
  - arrosenberg 10y ago
    This existed (kind of) in an App called Pulse. It was a feed reader, not a database, but it was brilliant for organizing news articles and searching by title. Then LinkedIn bought it and promptly ruined, then shuttered it. Still waiting for someone to release a new newsreader app with the same scrolling format. I would have absolutely paid to keep and improve that app.
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oneeyedpigeon 10y ago

Publishers that have come to the web from old-school media are still failing to understand the medium. They take their print content, slap it up on a website (designed to replicate the look of a print newspaper!), surround it with ads, and expect it to behave in exactly the same way as hardcopy newspapers. It doesn't, for a myriad of reasons. I have experience of this world, having worked with old-school book publishers and old-media print journalists. They are way too entrenched in their understanding of publishing/journalism to make the change. The closest I've seen anyone get to something that might work, and they're still a long, long way off, is the Guardian. At least they understand that a) they need to provide additional content, suited to the medium (e.g. quality infographics, interactive data, etc.) and b) online advertising is not enough, but current paywall implementations are a poor substitute. Spotify is a great example to compare. If Spotify worked the same way as online news, you'd go to Spotify, browse through some skeuomorphic representation of a CD rack, get interrupted, find an album you like the look of, listen to the album with an obnoxious advert between each song, put it back in the rack, repeat. Is there a single newspaper that will allow me to even, for example, do something useful with their content by collecting it / tagging it / whatever for future reference? Will they let my contacts, or famous people, recommend content on a particular subject? Will they offer any kind of api for other publishers wishing to reference their material?

lawik 10y ago
Thought this would just be a rant against old media but the last paragraph surprised me. Yes, that would be interesting. Not sure if spotify for news would work but a single db where you could read up on most major publications content around a specific subject or search term, standard interface, could be amazing.
- arrosenberg 10y ago
  This existed (kind of) in an App called Pulse. It was a feed reader, not a database, but it was brilliant for organizing news articles and searching by title. Then LinkedIn bought it and promptly ruined, then shuttered it. Still waiting for someone to release a new newsreader app with the same scrolling format. I would have absolutely paid to keep and improve that app.
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