3 ms·
I can only speak for myself, but here is what I would happily pay for: I would happily pay up to 20 cents to read a single article, ad free (or even, I suppose,
by Aqueous 3y ago
I can only speak for myself, but here is what I would happily pay for: I would happily pay up to 20 cents to read a single article, ad free (or even, I suppose, not ad free), and for perpetual access to that article. And I would happily pay up to 50 bucks a month for all of the articles I read from all
publications combined. What I will not do is purchase 20 subscriptions with recurring charges to 20 different media publications, none of which let me read articles from any other publication, and then remember to cancel them and reactivate them on a continuous basis so I can fly through paywalls. What I will also not do is hand over a bunch of personal contact information for the privilege of reading a single article, subjecting myself to all manner of unsolicited marketing emails. I have a feeling I'm not alone.
The sooner we can get to where this is all going, which I believe is tiny, contactless, trust-less, anonymous micropayments on a per-page basis, not a coercive subscription model built on dark patterns like recurring charges and call-to-cancel, the better it will be for everyone . Paywalls and other gating have totally ruined the user experience of the Internet and it is totally orthogonal to how the Internet and its protocols were designed to function. The sooner media realizes that they have to band together to adopt some sort of per-page or per-view micropayments solution in order remain aligned with the content model baked into the web's architecture, the sooner they will figure out how to support their profession with a continuous revenue stream and also, yes, even profit.
And for those who say that will warp the incentives of news reporting: they are already warped by page views and ad revenue. It's self-deluding to think that subscriptions somehow prevent that.
- hedora 3y agoThe Apple News subscription is basically what you are asking for. The main problem is that it pays publishers by article view, so it still incentivizes clickbait. I’d love an alternative where you choose N publications that each run their own feed. Payment would still be done by articles read, but the financial incentive would change to having a good feed instead of having good clickbait headlines.
- gnicholas 3y agoI thought of Apple News also. My understanding is you can get access to most of the content from some publishers, but even then discovery is an issue. That is, you can't easily read the WSJ cover-to-cover.
- Aqueous 3y agoYes, I'm an Apple News subscriber, and it is the closest thing to what I'm talking about, no doubt because Apple is the only company with enough sway to convince publishers this is in their own interests. But even Apple can't push them nearly far enough. Having to look up the same article in Apple News when I'm paywalled through the web site even though I can legitimately access it is extremely annoying. These publications are definitely not going out of their way to take me to my legitimate, paid-for Apple News copy of their article - and I'm sure that's by design. Secondly, only a subset of publications are available. I want there to be equal access to all articles. But media does not want to compete on a level playing field like that.