Won’t Subscribe • Hacker News Board

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#301

Post by bthallplz » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

znpy wrote: post #211

mnky9800n wrote: post #133

What's strange is it used to be you would pick up a newspaper at a stand for the day, pay a dollar or whatever, and then have quite a lot of articles to read for that day. But now, it is impossible, the only way is to lock-in. And that may be for the rest of your life if the complaints about the labirynth you may navigate to unsubscribe the nytimes is to be believed. If there was some sort of daily access pass that d…

Ironically enough, buying a physical copy of a newspaper is quite literally "a daily pass", and you get to keep the newspaper in case you want to re-read an article tomorrow, want to dig deeper or share it with somebody else in the house/office. Here in .it most newspapers cost less than 2.50-3€, and you get a physical good. I just checked on one of the most relevant newspapers in Italy (IlSole24Ore) and if you want…

This makes me wonder how effective a Jetbrains model would be for publishers. Pay once to receive access to the entire archive as of the date when your subscription ends. Or a one-time payment to just get access to the archive as of the payment date.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#302

Post by dwohnitmok » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

spartas wrote: post #157

dwohnitmok wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the problem of reader regret with upfront payments (which would be the number one problem with clickbait) I could imagine a time-limited "payment loss." That is within, say, a day of having paid for an article, the reader can decide that the author/publication should not be paid for the article. This is not a refund; the reader does not get the money back. But the author doesn't get the money either. The money go…

The publication is still paid a bit for the article when money in the fund is distributed to "all publications participating in the payment system". This presents an opportunity for low-effort publications to crank out oodles of articles in the hopes of getting people to either pay for articles or get paid out by the fund. Why would I, as a reader, choose to participate in your Kafkaesque payment system when the prev…

> The publication is still paid a bit for the article when money in the fund is distributed to "all publications participating in the payment system".

That was a throwaway implementation of a "black hole," there are many others. Although in this particular case that failure mode is handled by proportionality. If they don't make a lot of money they won't get a lot of money (if they make no money they get no money). It's still gameable to some extent by paying for your own articles, but that becomes a bet that you will globally have more disgruntled readers choosing to withhold payment than the cut taken by the payment facilitator, which is a risky bet. There's no risk-free moneymaking opportunity that I see here.

> Why would I, as a reader, choose to participate in your Kafkaesque payment system when the prevailing solution is to contact my card issuer and dispute the transaction? Certainly that takes a lot less time than having to phone the NY Times (because they do not allow you to cancel a subscription through the website).

The point would be that it isn't a subscription and that everything is a la carte so there is no convoluted cancellation process. There's no reason (and no real incentive) for the payment facilitator to make any of this hard to use, unless the number of users who decide to withhold payment is truly gargantuan. Blendle demonstrates that it would be even easier than contacting your credit card issuer (although Blendle used refunds).

The real nail in the coffin is that people in general don't want to pay a la carte and businesses like subscriptions better anyways since the revenue stream is much more stable and, as in the case of the NYT, there's quite a bit of friction for a user to stop paying. A do-nothing default of "I get money from users" vs a do-nothing default of no money is too juicy to pass up.

I think payments a la carte for articles will really only work for individual, part-time writers, who don't have the infrastructure in place to demand a subscription or otherwise don't like subscriptions.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#303

Post by notJim » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

grumple wrote: post #165

mnky9800n wrote: post #133

What's strange is it used to be you would pick up a newspaper at a stand for the day, pay a dollar or whatever, and then have quite a lot of articles to read for that day. But now, it is impossible, the only way is to lock-in. And that may be for the rest of your life if the complaints about the labirynth you may navigate to unsubscribe the nytimes is to be believed. If there was some sort of daily access pass that d…

These prices are just crazy compared to their old model. Do these papers really think they are providing as much value as Netflix (or more)? Even ignoring journalistic quality...

Indeed, who needs an informed population when you can have an entertained one.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#304

Post by grok22 » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 4:39 PM UTC

Came across PressReader and Scroll in the comment section of TFA. Anyone use PressReader? It seems funky in that it seems like it has actual images of the physical newspaper or magazine (so the layout of everything is like the actual physical paper or magazine). Do you find that difficult to use? On the samples I had to zoom and scroll to read anything, but it kind of felt nice too. Is it worth the 29.99 monthly subscription?

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#305

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 4:39 PM UTC

albumsrexp wrote: post #243

anentropic wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't limit myself to the music of one band, so i really appreciate spotify this is a bizarre analogy no one had to limit themselves to listening to only one band before Spotify

Back in the days of buying albums, comparable to the newsstand days, was certainly a lot more expensive to listen to multiple albums. There was the radio, but you weren't in control of that. You could make mix tapes, in the 90s. But you might have more of a tendency to prefer sticking to one band since you couldn't preview their albums before buying, other than getting lucky hearing a tune in the radio. Seems like a…

And then there were small record stores like HEAR (bay area?) or Wall of Sound (Seattle) where you could listen to as much of as many albums (CDs) as you wanted to before buying.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#306

Post by munificent » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

ako wrote: post #126

boplicity wrote: post #19

As a long-time publisher, there is only one primary metric that matters to me: loyal readers. I don't publish for the occasional visitor. I publish for the loyal readers that I have worked hard to cultivate, engage, and enrichen. The primary work is one of building a relationship with a loyal readership, based on consistency and quality. Our websites, as they're designed, are probably a little annoying to people who…

As a publisher maybe it is time to rethink your primary metric. As a long-time reader, i'm not interesting in being a loyal reader, i'm interested in reading the best news. I don't limit myself to the music of one band, so i really appreciate spotify, and i don't limit myself to the news of one publisher.

> I don't limit myself to the music of one band, so i really appreciate spotify

This is perhaps a better analogy than you realize, but not for the reason you realize.

Yes, Spotify is great for music consumers, but it is profoundly destroying the well-being of music producers. Of course, the big-money days of the 90s are never coming back, but I hope most people would agree that talented musicians should be able to earn a living wage from their art so that they can focus most of their time on it. That's a net benefit to society.

But Spotify returns so little money to the artists you conveniently stream that music is inexorably turning into a hobby for all but a tiny fraction of pop stars.

Unless you want 99% of journalists to be hobbyists doing it in their free time when they aren't serving people coffee at the nearby Starbucks, then Spotify's isn't the business model to advocate.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#307

Post by nobody9999 » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

chris_f wrote: post #200

jeremiahlee wrote: post #114

I think the Web Monetization API currently incubating as a proposed W3C standard would provide the experience you are desiring. Consumers establish a wallet provider and install a browser extension (for now, until the standard is formally adopted). When a Web Monetization HTML tag is encountered, the browser starts streaming micropayments every second while you are engaging with the content. Content creators can then…

The other nice thing about Web Monetization is that you can use it to divide earnings to content providers on your site through probabilistic revenue sharing [0]. I have been using it for the last 3 months and it is simple to implmentent and helps support an open standard. The concern on basing payment on length of the site visit are valid and something I think will need to be addressed at some point. People will try…

>I have been using it for the last 3 months and it is simple to implmentent and helps support an open standard.

>The concern on basing payment on length of the site visit are valid and something I think will need to be addressed at some point. People will try to game it as it gains acceptance.

Please post the name of your site so I can make sure to never visit it.

Not because you're bad or evil. Not because your content is bad or doesn't match my "biases."

But because the entire idea that just visting your site entitles you (or anyone else) to income is incredible hubris and disrespectful of the intelligence of your users.

Hey. I get it. We all need to make money to pay for the things we need to survive.

But creating an environment where the decision to visit a site (not even to access content, if I understand the spec properly) requires a calculation as to whether or not I first want to pay is so far from being reasonable (think being automatically charged, say, $10 as a minimum purchase when you enter an Amazon Go[0] store).

Please don't consider this a personal attack. It is not. Rather, I'm using strong language to express my point and encourage you to back off that road.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=16008589011

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#308

Post by justaguy88 » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

cpeterso wrote: post #298

psadri wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could allocate each loyal subscriber a limited number of trial passes to share with their friends. The passes would allow them to access one or a few articles for a limited time.

Similarly, LWN.net allows subscribers to share links to individual articles with non-subscribers. (I don't know if LWN.net has a limit, but non-subscriber links to articles are often submitted here on HN.)

I love the LWN model, in addition to this it lets you read the subscription-only articles after a week, and to also (to an extent) choose what you feel you can pay

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#309

Post by ako » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

anentropic wrote: post #199

ako wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a publisher maybe it is time to rethink your primary metric. As a long-time reader, i'm not interesting in being a loyal reader, i'm interested in reading the best news. I don't limit myself to the music of one band, so i really appreciate spotify, and i don't limit myself to the news of one publisher.

> I don't limit myself to the music of one band, so i really appreciate spotify this is a bizarre analogy no one had to limit themselves to listening to only one band before Spotify

Record companies and artist were initially also fighting single track purchasing, trying to keep customers to buy albums, fearing the loss of revenue if customers could buy only what they liked, without all the low value fillers.

And they were right to fear it, as spotify revenue streams hardly resemble the revenue streams they had from selling albums.

Selling through spotify is now seen as marketing, bands have to make their money from concerts.

Newspapers and magazines are correct to fear selling per article, it will significantly reduce their revenue, with no real revenue model to make up for it. Newspaper concerts?

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#310

Post by munificent » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

mnky9800n wrote: post #133

What's strange is it used to be you would pick up a newspaper at a stand for the day, pay a dollar or whatever, and then have quite a lot of articles to read for that day. But now, it is impossible, the only way is to lock-in. And that may be for the rest of your life if the complaints about the labirynth you may navigate to unsubscribe the nytimes is to be believed. If there was some sort of daily access pass that d…

I think a big part of this is that the psychology of cash and online purchases is very different.

When you're walking down the street with some bills in your pocket and you see a newspaper, this is a low-effort, low-stakes transaction. So you're comfortable making an impulse purchase of a newspaper without thinking about it too much. Thirty seconds later, you've got a paper in hand.

But when you have to put your credit card information on a website, the stakes feel higher. There is some level of risk. Do I trust this company to keep my information secure? Will there be repaying payments? Do I really want the newspaper badly enough to type in the 16 digits? All of this requires just enough cognitive effort that it's no longer an impulse purchase so your natural decision aversion kicks in and you just decide to not bother.

Newspapers spent a ton of time experimenting with microtransaction business models when the web first got big and they were never able to make it succeed. They do subscriptions because it's the best thing they've found so far that actually works with human psychology.