And people prefer paid over free all the time. Many of us are loaded with a dozen+ subscriptions. I have Netflix, Spotify, Prime Video, HBO, Showtime, Apple Arcade, iCloud Storage, EA Access, Xbox Game Pass, Adobe Creative Cloud, NY Times all as subscriptions, and countless paid apps and solutions. I'm far from alone in this.
Clearly millions of people pay enormous sums for good products.
The problem is that often it's hard to get anything but an ad-buttressed solution because everyone wants to double-dip (e.g. NYTimes, Hulu). Further the conversation often comes up for things that have lower value, but the creators hope it's their payday. There are countless podcasts that seem low effort -- usually a group of guys chatting with no preparation or work about things -- that I have to imagine people turn on as background noise, but if faced with a pay wall would abandon quickly (examples would be Accidental Tech Podcast or the like, the Daring Fireball one, etc -- the "how can I print money with zero work" podcasts).
There are others that are absolutely brilliant that are worth it but have some byzantine, many-islands, poorly supported way of funding them -- Anthropocene Review, 99% Invisible, Hidden Brain, etc. As we get into a small number of large podcast subscription services I expect a lot of them will see great results.