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Unfortunately, micropayments encourage click-bait and pop-news (but that's not to say that advertising doesn't either). We've also have seen other failure modes

by sgk284 9y ago

Unfortunately, micropayments encourage click-bait and pop-news (but that's not to say that advertising doesn't either). We've also have seen other failure modes with payment-per-article in academic journals, though payment is much larger there, so may not be a fair comparison. In general a la carte payments usually lead to overall higher costs (e.g. Classic Blockbuster vs. Netflix). My ideal system would be a Spotify-like system. I'd pay a flat rate for access to all news and then each organization gets a percentage of my payment proportional to the number of articles I read by them. That is, if I pay $10/mo and 50% of the things I read are on the New York Times, then they'd get $5 (ignoring margin for whatever entity manages this exchange). I can't ever imagine news orgs opt-ing into this model though. Perhaps Apple could pull an iTunes-equivalent with Apple News?

always_good 9y ago
That model effectively shuts down all news sites that don't make it into the News-Spotify program. Kinda of like how my telcom gives everyone "free Messenger/Whatsapp" so nobody is going to use anything but Messenger/Whatsapp. Centralization is just going to get worse and worse until the internet feels like AOL back in 2000.
tpeo 9y ago
Actually, I think the opposite might happen. If click-bait works by obfuscating the real headline of the article, then readers might choose not to click on a link due to uncertainty aversion. To put it simply, if click-bait works when you don't know what the article is about and it costs nothing to know, charging a fee (no matter how small) could kill it.
dragonwriter 9y ago
With modern web payment models and analytics, advertising is basically third-party micropayments, so it has all the adverse impacts of micropayments plus all the adverse impacts of the bill being paid by third parties whose interests are different from and often adverse to the news consumer.
1123581321 9y ago
Chances are that you're not willing to spend enough per month. The music industry is (according to googling) about $25BB a year for live events and $15BB a year for retail (streaming, downloads, discs, etc.) Spotify's revenue is about $3BB/year, ballpark 10% of the revenue needed to support the music industry. (Spotify has its own expenses, which we are ignoring.) News media can't command live event revenue the way music can, and their physical sales are disappearing faster than music's. That suggests, to use the music analogy, that subscribers to a Spotify-like system would have to support most of the approximately $25BB that this industry commands. Depending on how many news readers there are compared to music listeners, that's possibly $50-150/mo that would need to be asked of subscribers. Outside of Financial Times subscribers (even that $600/year is ad-subsidized), most people aren't willing to spend this much on a newspaper. You can quibble with the numbers, but ultimately the news industry is more reliant on individual subscribers than the music industry.

by sgk284 9y ago

always_good 9y ago

That model effectively shuts down all news sites that don't make it into the News-Spotify program. Kinda of like how my telcom gives everyone "free Messenger/Whatsapp" so nobody is going to use anything but Messenger/Whatsapp. Centralization is just going to get worse and worse until the internet feels like AOL back in 2000.

tpeo 9y ago

Actually, I think the opposite might happen. If click-bait works by obfuscating the real headline of the article, then readers might choose not to click on a link due to uncertainty aversion. To put it simply, if click-bait works when you don't know what the article is about and it costs nothing to know, charging a fee (no matter how small) could kill it.

dragonwriter 9y ago

With modern web payment models and analytics, advertising is basically third-party micropayments, so it has all the adverse impacts of micropayments plus all the adverse impacts of the bill being paid by third parties whose interests are different from and often adverse to the news consumer.

1123581321 9y ago

Chances are that you're not willing to spend enough per month. The music industry is (according to googling) about $25BB a year for live events and $15BB a year for retail (streaming, downloads, discs, etc.) Spotify's revenue is about $3BB/year, ballpark 10% of the revenue needed to support the music industry. (Spotify has its own expenses, which we are ignoring.) News media can't command live event revenue the way music can, and their physical sales are disappearing faster than music's. That suggests, to use the music analogy, that subscribers to a Spotify-like system would have to support most of the approximately $25BB that this industry commands. Depending on how many news readers there are compared to music listeners, that's possibly $50-150/mo that would need to be asked of subscribers. Outside of Financial Times subscribers (even that $600/year is ad-subsidized), most people aren't willing to spend this much on a newspaper. You can quibble with the numbers, but ultimately the news industry is more reliant on individual subscribers than the music industry.