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Won’t Subscribe

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Re: Won’t Subscribe

#91

Post by bbarn »

kbenson wrote: post #88
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…

This all really started with a-la carte subscriptions, which were a good thing, even if it only partially solved the problem and was implemented without much granularity by the cable providers (there used to be so many channels that most people just never cared about). Then with the internet, there started to be less need for a provider to bundle everything, so services started popping up everywhere. Really, this is…

Why own the water when you can own the pipes?

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#92

Post by toyg »

comex wrote: post #61

> So, says Mr Manager, “Why on earth would I invest in selling individual articles when a click on the “Subscribe” button gets me a hundred times the revenue?” > Why they’re wrong: Their arithmetic didn’t consider their chance of getting me to click on “Subscribe.” Didn’t it? Sure, maybe Tim Bray would have been willing to buy an article for $1 even though he wasn’t willing to subscribe. Maybe a lot of people would h…

> any amount of payment is a huge psychological barrier.

We thought the same of mobile software. "People just won't pay for apps!" but it turns out they will, they just have to feel like they're getting a good deal.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#93

Post by toyg »

bachmeier wrote: post #47

I found David Perell's podcast interview with Robert Cottrell a fascinating discussion of the economics of journalism: https://www.perell.com/podcast/robert-cottrell On a different topic, why don't I subscribe? Lots of reasons, I suppose, including other priorities for my income combined with a horrible value/dollar ratio. But that's not really it. Before I'd even consider paying for journalism, I'd need to trust tha…

It's a vicious circle:

* the world is getting more and more complex with every day

* people are getting more and more "informed" through the internet, everyone can basically fact-check anything you write, almost in realtime

* news orgs are under economic pressure, so they cut specialized roles and force journalists to be even more generalist than they were before and work even faster than before, with an inevitable fall in quality

* people notice the fall in quality and stop reading, increasing economic pressures. Goto 1.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#94

Post by toyg »

Symbiote wrote: post #28
ziml77 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly doubt Bloomberg cares enough. They make their money selling terminal subscriptions and data feeds for obscene amounts.

Sites are gradually tightening up on workarounds like clearing cookies. Simply opening Bloomberg nwes in a private tab now fails (I think it's a bug that the site can detect a private tab is used).

Others are actually getting looser though, because they fear losing google juice.

I know of a massive European newspaper that just leaves the entire content of paywalled items simply hidden in the DOM.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#95

Post by bbarn »

Media is one of the most complicated problems we face in this age. We have on one side a desire for information to be free, and on the other side a desire to profit for one's labor. The middle ground between that is to attract people to give you some of their money for your labor, which changes the nature of the published works. Now your published works must not only be informative, but exciting, and more so than any competition that exists.

This, left unchecked, turns into shock-journalism, or journalism sponsored by entities that may want to sway your opinion on other topics, all the while requiring more advanced modes of convincing you to subscribe - either with your attention or your money.

It's not just a problem of the mechanics of how to pay for something, it's an existential problem of news in general.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#96

Post by goliatone »

toyg wrote: post #86
faeyanpiraat wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be really annoying for loyal readers. Imagine this loop: Purchase 2 week pass, read bunch of articles, some time passes, wants to read new article, oh well my pass expired..

It doesn't have to be a XOR. I know of at least one minor newspaper that sells that kind of pass (1-month non-renewing sub) as well as other subscriptions: https://ilmanifesto.it/tariffe/ It's Italian but the table is easy enough to decipher. "Mese" is a month. "Digitale" is digital (duh). "Coupon" is a scheme where they send you vouchers to redeem the newspaper in shops, and is extremely popular among their readersh…

Thanks for the link! Would you mind recommending any radio stations with good online presence? I haven’t been lucky searching online

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#97

Post by jdc »

bbarn wrote: post #95

Media is one of the most complicated problems we face in this age. We have on one side a desire for information to be free, and on the other side a desire to profit for one's labor. The middle ground between that is to attract people to give you some of their money for your labor, which changes the nature of the published works. Now your published works must not only be informative, but exciting, and more so than any…

Where does advertising fit into this viewpoint?

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#98

Post by toyg »

coffeefirst wrote: post #31
simonw wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> In those times, the “free” options were the same as they are today

It was easier to circulate some of that paper though. In Europe, cafes will typically buy a bunch of newspapers for their members and leave them free to read on their premises; political parties would do the same or even staple them to bulletin-boards on the street. Same for libraries. I expect the US had some equivalent to that model.

The digital divide makes it increasingly harder to circulate content in that manner.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#99

Post by toyg »

Waterfall wrote: post #37

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…

There is an issue of correct evaluation of quality though. You might not think an article was worth paying for as you read it, but then it will give you an edge in some conversation later on. This accrues the more articles you read - maybe each item is not earth-shattering in itself, but together they paint you a picture that actually informs your actions.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#100

Post by alexmingoia »

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…

I would go as far as to say the only thing that made newspapers relevant was distribution.

The readers have a direct relationship with authors now. They follow them on Twitter, YouTube, blogs, etc. Authors of news are no longer full-time journalists, but everyone online. Everything is news and everyone is an author.

Why pay the NYT to tell you what people will tell you on Twitter?

Why pay a local paper to tell you about a fire or protest the next day, when people will post a video online as it happens?

The post-Internet generations don’t even watch TV or read newspapers at all.

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