The reason I mostly don't subscribe is I follow lots of aggregator links to lots of different publications, and I don't read enough at any one publication to subscribe. Micropayments would solve that for me, if they were reasonable (not a dollar per article) and just a simple button click, and I trusted that the article wasn't clickbait.
Another business model would be some kind of group subscription to all the major papers and magazines. They could keep track of whose articles I read and distribute my payment among themselves.
Instead they're stuck in an ancient business model where you subscribe to a newspaper and a couple magazines and just read those, because it's all printed on paper and distributed in batches.
In the absence of micropayments or group subscriptions, I pay for one major publication, bypass paywalls on the rest, and feel like I've done my bit. If everyone did the same, then with a reasonably random distribution the publications would all be getting paid.
There was a "national model" in Eastern Europe, that offered one subscription to multiple services, but the company evolved to provide individual solutions. While it was good for the consumer, you essentially had competing newspapers under one subscription and if they wanted to raise the price they needed to cooperate. That didn't work out.
Then there was blendle - a service that offered a similar approach, but for micropayments - provide credit card once and pay as you read. They pivoted to subscriptions as the model wasn't working: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blendle
> Another business model would be some kind of group subscription to all the major papers and magazines. They could keep track of whose articles I read and distribute my payment among themselves.
I believe this is the future. Not only for traditional newspapers and magazines, but for all written content of quality online. Massive syndicates of blogs and websites under common subscription umbrellas. Like video streaming is today. Let's end this online nightmare of ads, scams, SEO, freeloading and clickbait!
There's PressReader already today, but at $30 per month, it is too pricey for most. Readly is a whole lot cheaper for a smaller catalogue, but suffers from having an extremely bad user experience. I think most people would be interested in mainly news and independent blogs. What sane individual reads stuff like Rolling Stone or Vogue?
> In the absence of micropayments or group subscriptions, I pay for one major publication, bypass paywalls on the rest, and feel like I've done my bit. If everyone did the same, then with a reasonably random distribution the publications would all be getting paid.
Another business model would be some kind of group subscription to all the major papers and magazines. They could keep track of whose articles I read and distribute my payment among themselves.
Instead they're stuck in an ancient business model where you subscribe to a newspaper and a couple magazines and just read those, because it's all printed on paper and distributed in batches.
In the absence of micropayments or group subscriptions, I pay for one major publication, bypass paywalls on the rest, and feel like I've done my bit. If everyone did the same, then with a reasonably random distribution the publications would all be getting paid.