3 ms·
> I think consumers would be much more ok with paying for reading a news article at $0.01/read. But alas, such options aren't on the table. I do concede it's ha
by kristianc 8y ago
> I think consumers would be much more ok with paying for reading a news article at $0.01/read. But alas, such options aren't on the table. I do concede it's hard to prove the reason for current transaction fees is what I attributed in my post, but there is evidence for it.
I think you'll find that very few people are willing to engage in any degree of per article mental gymnastics to read a news article, and will instead be very very selective about what they read, with ruinous effects for local news.
If Spotify was not $9.99 flat fee you would likely not happily leave it on all night or use it as background music for fear of what it was costing. The difference between the way people used metered and unmetered internet was huge. Charging any kind of fee on a per article basis would have profound impacts on the way people consume media.
- abecedarius 8y agoThis is said a lot, very confidently, yet I wonder. Water, gas, and power are basically microtransactions on this model, for many people. Most people don't worry about mental accounting when they turn the tap. How sure are we really that this isn't just something that hasn't worked on a large scale for information yet?
- 4ntonius8lock 8y agoSuch a model could even have a cap: It's $0.001/article up to $20/month. Like... cell phone data use? But without having to sign contracts or pre-payment. If only a few of the paywall newspapers would implement a direct per article fee, even at $0.10-0.50 I would pay for many articles because I'm too lazy and don't want to pull up a javascript disabled google cache version of the page or fire up a VM... or any of the other techniques SWIM would use to get around paywalls.