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This is good. We need to get back to letting prices do their thing and provide the proper signals to the publisher/producer and the reader/customer. Pricing h
by TimJYoung 8y ago
This is good. We need to get back to letting prices do their thing and provide the proper signals to the publisher/producer and the reader/customer. Pricing helps producers clarify who they want to their customers to be, and it helps customers clarify exactly what they do or don't actually want.
Someone already mentioned software subscriptions and Adobe Photoshop, in the context of professionals vs hobbyists. If Photoshop is too expensive, then someone will create an alternative that is cheaper. That's basically what happened with shareware in the 80s and 90s. When proper price signals are in place, the market will adjust and new opportunities will be created for entry-level players that want to address gaps in the product offerings.
Finally, in terms of accessibility: remember that there are insitutions called libraries that are the great equalizers when it comes to accessing paid content. For many years now one can go in and read any magazine or newspaper that one could want, without paying a dime. If you find yourself complaining about content subscriptions, you might be better served by making sure that your local library is fully-funded.
- intrasight 8y agoLibraries can only help with printed paid content. Electronic content can be licensed to only be viewable by one individual.
- TimJYoung 8y agoIt doesn't need to be, though. I'm sure that libraries can work out a licensing deal that works fine with client-side certificates or some other "proof" that it is the library's machines that are being used to access the content.
- samlevine 8y agoAd-supported websites are about as pure of an example of revealed preference as you can get. Advertisers target eyeballs that spend money, and the sites that capture the attention of said eyeballs get ad revenue. The golden age of journalism, pre-web, was based on price signals being divorced from content because of classifieds propping up everything else. We have been given the web that we want. It has been found wanting, because we ourselves are wanting.
- TimJYoung 8y agoWeb advertising only works to reveal preferences through privacy-invading ad tracking, and the public is showing less and less tolerance for such measures. Newspapers were absolutely using classifieds to blow up their revenue, but advertising still played a big part and I doubt if classifieds were a significant source of revenue for most magazines (a quick look didn't turn up much in terms of figures). Web publishing developed the way that it did because publishers weren't particularly good at foreseeing what the end-game was going to look like, combined with a good bit of hubris about what actual effects the web would have on print publishing. The resultant excessive ad tracking occurred because publishers were trying to, ahem, "polish a turd".