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Won’t Subscribe

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Re: Won’t Subscribe

#221

Post by pmontra »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #203
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…

Oh hey, now my 20 background tabs can cost me money, that's useful. Will they show a ($) icon like they currently show a "playing sound" icon?

Not only that. Am I going to pay twice if I reload the page / close and reopen the browser / reboot the computer / view the same article in another browser or my phone / read it again tomorrow / etc?

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#222

Post by pc86 »

pmontra wrote: post #221
JulianMorrison wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh hey, now my 20 background tabs can cost me money, that's useful. Will they show a ($) icon like they currently show a "playing sound" icon?

Not only that. Am I going to pay twice if I reload the page / close and reopen the browser / reboot the computer / view the same article in another browser or my phone / read it again tomorrow / etc?

Rest assured it will be whatever is most expensive for you.

The idea that an HTML tag can cost someone money without explicit approval every single time is ludicrous.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#223

Post by sjy »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #26
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…

At least for newspapers this model can’t work. When considered as a civic function to ensure unbiased access to facts and emerging critical stories, your approach is completely at odds with consumers, even loyal customers. The reason is that the market signals emitted by loyal readers don’t have any relationship to objective reality. Loyal readers might disbelieve evolution and only respond to articles that favor cre…

Doesn’t the existence of “loyal readers” imply that the publication approach is not “at odds with consumers”? If we can’t trust consumers to emit the correct market signals then we should not rely on them to voluntarily fund important civic functions.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#224

Post by dunnevens »

Kosirich wrote: post #178

What the author didn't mention explicitly is the obvious sludge techniques used in media subscription models. ( https://www.behavioraleconomics.com/resources/mini-encyclope... ) In case of The Economist, to which I'm subscribed, you have to call them...on a phone...like it's the 80s The worst offender of the type is scribed.com that has a fake "we're sorry to see you leave" page before you actually hit the final "yes…

Despite all their faults, that's the main reason I won't subscribe to anything unless I can go through the intermediaries of Apple, Amazon, or Paypal. When I decided to cancel the NY Times, all I had to do is stop payment via Paypal. Didn't have to deal with their retention department, though that department did send me a couple of vaguely angry emails. Still subscribed to the Kindle version of the Economist, but cancellation is just a click away at Amazon. The price I pay for that is non-access to articles on their web site, but I can live with that.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#225

Post by dmurray »

mikelward wrote: post #10

> “But wait,” says Mr Manager, “you already subscribe to five publications, so you’ve proved you have a propensity to subscribe! You’re exactly my target market!” Wrong. It’s exactly because I’ve done some subscribing that I’m just not gonna do any more. Exactly. Same thing is happening with cable unbundling. Few people want to subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO, ESPN+, Disney+, Peacock, and YouTube TV/Sli…

It's just not true though. You could use the same argument after he'd already subscribed to four publications: should the Vancouver Sun not have bothered trying to get him to subscribe because he's already done some subscribing and is obviously "not gonna do any more"? Of course not. He really was their target market. And I'd be willing to bet within a year he'll have subscribed to content from another publisher, possibly at the expense of one of the existing ones.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#226

Post by jeegsy »

bigiain wrote: post #134
ako wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It solves the problem only partially: newspapers can't live from small payments on popular articles only, they need bundling to generate enough volume. Same thing can be seen with music industry: spotify doesn't pay enough per play, so artists are now told to use spotify as marketing, and make money from performances. Not sure what a newspaper performance would look like.

> Not sure what a newspaper performance would look like. An election? /s

That is excellent

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#227

Post by sjy »

flexie wrote: post #143
ricardobeat wrote: post #112

Bring back traditional advertising. No user profiling, no retargeting, no data collection. Pay for exposure and not clicks. Problem solved. Micropayments is a red herring. Print newspapers use to cost what, 50c a piece? And that included an absolutely massive printing, sales and distribution infrastructure. It is preposterous that digital publishing would cost more.

Developers cost a lot more than typographers and delivery boys and you need a lot of them to run a modern online media. A developer on staff is sort of like a subscription that the newspaper pays. The way to bring back advertisement to newspapers is to use antitrust rules and to start taxing search engines and social networks. When Facebook or Google runs an ad for my local gym, it is taxed in some remote tropical is…

Have you got a source for the claim about developer costs? It seems believable, but I don’t think many media companies publish detailed information about their labour costs, and I also expect a huge difference between eg. local news and global mastheads with scaling issues.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#228

Post by cementMountain »

hnhnsomething12 wrote: post #59

What exactly are the news publishers even providing these days? They aren't a trust authority and they aren't a distribution platform. The internet undermined the first and replaced the latter. The future could be readers having a direct relationship with authors, and necessary infrastructure "unbundled" as it were. Author pays a non-partisan fact check service to accredit what they say. With proper accreditation the…

This is the same publishing model with extra steps.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#229

Post by JulianMorrison »

pmontra wrote: post #221
JulianMorrison wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh hey, now my 20 background tabs can cost me money, that's useful. Will they show a ($) icon like they currently show a "playing sound" icon?

Not only that. Am I going to pay twice if I reload the page / close and reopen the browser / reboot the computer / view the same article in another browser or my phone / read it again tomorrow / etc?

Given that the implementation seems to be "constant drain of money per time open" then reading it twice costs twice, and the only way to read at your leisure without throwing away money is to paste the text into Notepad.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#230

Post by nl »

Nextgrid wrote: post #146
ako wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It solves the problem only partially: newspapers can't live from small payments on popular articles only, they need bundling to generate enough volume. Same thing can be seen with music industry: spotify doesn't pay enough per play, so artists are now told to use spotify as marketing, and make money from performances. Not sure what a newspaper performance would look like.

> newspapers can't live from small payments on popular articles only Printed newspapers were surviving just fine despite selling for a few bucks despite it being a physical piece of paper that needed to be printed & delivered on very tight schedules. The same model should be applied for the web - the price point is already proven to be affordable enough for the majority of the market, and the lack of logistics would…

Ads - especially classified ads - paid for newspapers.
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