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Won’t Subscribe

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Re: Won’t Subscribe

#31

Post by coffeefirst »

simonw wrote: post #21
rexreed wrote: post #4

I think paywalls for journalism are retrograde. The exact people who can benefit from good journalism (the uninformed) are the exact people who won't subscribe. The people who are already in the demographic for the publication and informed are the ones subscribing. This is the inverse of what you'd think you'd want as a journalist. This is part of the overall news and social media echo-chamber, confirmation-bias indu…

I think many people in the news industry agree with you. The problem is that good journalism costs a lot of money, and the advertising business model has collapsed. It needs to be paid for somehow. This is also why non-profit news organizations are growing in influence. https://members.inn.org/directory is a good list of those. They tend to be supported by donations or wealthy benefactors, which is itself a risk beca…

It’s also a little ahistorical. Roll back the clock to the 1990’s, and NYT + your local paper + any magazines weren’t exactly cheap.

In those times, the “free” options were the same as they are today: broadcast news, NPR or the BBC.

It’s definitely a problem that the less engaged audience moved from their local news anchor to Facebook, but I can’t make that about paywalls.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#32

Post by notimetorelax »

jimnotgym wrote: post #14

More thoughts. I dabble with publications 1) I subscribe to the Guardian atm even though it is free to read 2) I tried to restart subscriptions with the Financial Times and Economist recently and gave up on both due to shitty behaviour, shitty terms, shitty UI. It is not all about price

I could never justify FT subscription price. It’s nice when employers provide it, though.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#33

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

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…

I for one would be happy to subscribe to 20+ distinct apps for TV & sports, if only it meant I could truly cancel cable and only consume internet service from the cable company.

But of course many apps require over the top extra cable-based subscriptions to channels to access content. So it’s not unbundling, it’s just regular cable bundling plus a ton of extra apps tacked on, the worst of both worlds.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#34

Post by notatoad »

gwbas1c wrote: post #16

I think if people pay for Netflix and Spotify, there's a market for a subscription to bypass paywalls.

there's definitely a market, but probably not at the revenue targets that newspapers have. I pay $12/mo for netflix, and $10/mo for spotify. i'd be happy to pay another ~$10/mo for a news service that gave me access to a similarly broad offering of newspaper articles.

but the way newspaper web-access subscriptions are priced, to get the same broad bundle of content as what i get from spotify or netflix i'd be paying thousands of dollars a month, which i'm absolutely not willing to do.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#35

Post by microcolonel »

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…

> ...there is only one primary metric that matters to me: loyal readers. I don't publish for the occasional visitor.

Okay, good luck with that. I don't know how somebody becomes a “loyal reader” if they can't even read your website to begin with. Especially with how many of these subscription rags play outrageous frame games and use facts to tell lies and half truths, it's insulting enough without half the article disappearing when you scroll, or a modal prompt.

I usually just don't open links to sites that I know work like this.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#36

Post by tuatoru »

Wistar wrote: post #30
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…

Starting about a year ago I began to see ever more articles in entertainment media about subscription fatigue and the coming "great re-bundling," especially in streaming services.

Well, I hope so. My reaction to choice fatigue is to say "forget it". I'll do something else instead.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#37

Post by Waterfall »

This will be the onlyfans to bangbros. The model works as long as they are not popular enough to pirate if it even works at all. The cost of subscription is not high for the WP or many for a trial, so it's more likely someone pays $1 to subscribe with a temporary card than to buy the articles. Think of the news articles similar to the commodity of porn. What would you do? Buy one video, or download the whole catalog every few trials? Text is cheap. It's everywhere. It'a small. You will not be able to guard secret information easily. The disposable nature of news makes it very hard to value by article, I have NEVER once found a news article worth paying for. I wonder if anyone here has a counter to that point, an article that was worth subscribe for.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#38

Post by tuatoru »

Plug for Presspatron [1].

Quote:

"PressPatron makes it easy to fund the future of journalism, via crowdfunding, membership payments and donations.

In a few simple steps, our platform allows supporters to make recurring and one-off contributions to their favourite media sites."

Easier cancellation, I believe, than many sites directly.

Edit: it's relevant to the question of "how does one ethically access news sites without submitting to all the Dark Patterns they use to force you to subscribe?"

Also, no relationahip at all between me and them, apart from me being an occasional user.

1. https://www.presspatron.com/

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#39

Post by _wldu »

"It dawns at me that if I were still at AWS, I might propose offering Digital Content Volume Sales as a Service. “Simple Article Sales Service”, SASS. Maybe I should write a PR/FAQ."

Would that be legal? Buy a subscription and then sell access to individual articles (micro payments) to third-parties? Or does he mean something else?

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#40

Post by Waterfall »

gombosg wrote: post #7

How would you pay for individual articles? Up-front? (If not, that's called donation.) If so, then what happens if you happen not to enjoy the content? Will you (users) feel like playing lottery every time you purchase an article? Feel disappointed for the purchase you just made? Or just quit paying on a certain site, for a certain author etc. after reading too many 'bad' (subjectively) articles? From this standpoint…

You never read an article behind a Paywall that showed a first portion asking you to subscribe?
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