3 ms·

If you believe content is worth paying for at all, the price of a cup of coffee every month seems perfectly reasonable. The NYT has a different business model,

If you believe content is worth paying for at all, the price of a cup of coffee every month seems perfectly reasonable. The NYT has a different business model, and is still partly supported by advertising in the print edition. The digital content pricing race-to-the-bottom is really unfortunate. It's why we have shitty free-to-play mobile games, for example: people won't pay more than a few dollars for a phone game anymore, so a lot of devs have to find other business models to support development.

digitalsushi 7y ago
or if not advertising inside products, then it rewards walled gardens to grow - the games, blogs, et al end up inside a subsidiary that collects payment for access to all of it together. and the walls grow.
wolfgke 7y ago
> If you believe content is worth paying for at all, the price of a cup of coffee every month seems perfectly reasonable. First: In the USA, a cup of coffee might cost 5$; in other countries, it is much cheaper. Second: Every payment you do in the internet leaves a huge data track since there exists no analogue for cash for paying anonymously in the internet. So in particular if you are skeptical of data krakens like Facebook etc., you should be very cautious to pay in the internet. In particular, for each payment in the internet, you do not only pay with money, but also with lots of sensitive data.
nextlevelwizard 7y ago
With SV salaries that is easy to justify. Normal people wouldn't pay even $3 for a cup of coffee.
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  The popularity of Starbucks suggests otherwise. But if you still don't like the coffee analogy, that's fine. The point is that $5 a month is not a lot of money for the average American. That's much less than the cost of a monthly newspaper subscription, and 20 years ago those were extremely popular.

3 ms·

If you believe content is worth paying for at all, the price of a cup of coffee every month seems perfectly reasonable. The NYT has a different business model,

by PhasmaFelis 7y ago

digitalsushi 7y ago
or if not advertising inside products, then it rewards walled gardens to grow - the games, blogs, et al end up inside a subsidiary that collects payment for access to all of it together. and the walls grow.
wolfgke 7y ago
> If you believe content is worth paying for at all, the price of a cup of coffee every month seems perfectly reasonable. First: In the USA, a cup of coffee might cost 5$; in other countries, it is much cheaper. Second: Every payment you do in the internet leaves a huge data track since there exists no analogue for cash for paying anonymously in the internet. So in particular if you are skeptical of data krakens like Facebook etc., you should be very cautious to pay in the internet. In particular, for each payment in the internet, you do not only pay with money, but also with lots of sensitive data.
nextlevelwizard 7y ago
With SV salaries that is easy to justify. Normal people wouldn't pay even $3 for a cup of coffee.
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  The popularity of Starbucks suggests otherwise. But if you still don't like the coffee analogy, that's fine. The point is that $5 a month is not a lot of money for the average American. That's much less than the cost of a monthly newspaper subscription, and 20 years ago those were extremely popular.