The jury is still out for businesses that depend on people paying for digital music. Both digital streaming services of Spotify and Pandora have been losing money since their inception. Apple's iTunes digital downloads of music declined 14% in 2015. Its peak sales was 2012. There are even some industry whispers that Apple may someday drop iTunes music sales altogether since the shrinking revenues won't be worth their attention.

Nobody knows the future but the above trends may mean that digital music sales could eventually go the same way as encyclopedias: free. Not enough people are willing to pay for digital music. They still pay for live concerts though. If that's the remaining sustainable business, musicians would have to earn income from performances ... or licensing deals.

>I would definitely pay for such a news service.

Yes, but there may not be enough people like you. When people say, "no one" will pay, they don't literally mean "zero" payers. Instead, they mean "not enough" will pay.

The market for music is correcting from a time when publishers acted as artificial hit-makers and rent-seekers and imposed a monopoly on the distribution of music, and a small select group of artists got rich in the process (and we all paid many times over for the same content as formats changed).

It "corrected" too far for a while with piracy, that exploded as a reaction to a bad market, but now with Apple Music, Spotify and other subscription services, we have achieved "better than free" for those of us who are willing to pay a fair price for a good service.

Today's system may pay less at the top (and in the middle) but it pays out to way more people overall who can now more realistically make a living as musicians.

Speaking only anecdotally, I personally know of 3 bands who now make enough money with digital royalties + occasional touring to live a "typically middle-class lifestyle".

They would never have been able to do this back in the major labels + physical distribution days..

I guess to bring this back on-topic, I think there would be a market for someone to provide intuitive, personalized and multi-source access to high-quality news articles and investigative journalism..

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/05/26/band-1-million-s...

"If you’re trying to live off your Spotify spins, stop it right now.

Taylor Swift makes $400,000 off Spotify in a weekend. But nearly everyone else making bubkes. Which means if you’re hoping to making streaming your breadwinner, you’re probably snacking on crumbs."

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/06/21/spotify-million-...

I would hazard that, for the corporations that manufacture Taylor Swift, $400k is bubkes too.

Over the past 5 years, I paid ~$500 for streaming subscriptions. It is incredibly unlikely that I would have bought $500 worth of albums in this time period. This is money that would have been left on the table.

What does half a cent per stream mean in this context? Half a cent per single song play? Per album play? How many cents do you pay per play to the artist for a song that you bought, instead of streamed?

After $100 registration per album, on CDBaby, the artist receives 100% of the receipt. Bandcamp takes 15%. So, yes, there are ways to buy music in which an artist receives the money: we just don't choose to buy albums because streaming is cheaper and more convenient. But don't fool yourself: virtually none of the $500 you paid went to support the artists or further their work.

Over the course of 3 months (the last month had a whole 30 streams, so mostly ignoring it):

2 albums and 42 songs sold - $57.42

4.3 million songs streamed - $5077.87

The real take-away: All that streaming isn't translating into digital album/song sales.

Music works well, because you can preview a song, even hear it three or four times, but still want to own it. TV and movies you can have trailers and ongoing series and online reviews to decide which to buy.

But news will always be a leap of faith, and click-bait will always be an excellent (short-term) strategy. If I previewed a song on iTunes, and then bought it, and the remaining ~2 minutes of the song was just static, I would be furious; I would be on the phone with Apple to yell at them.

I think the question then becomes, how much are you willing to pay vs how much does such a service cost. Does the economy of scale factor in here? Right now most of those services ask for ~$10 a month. Expecting all of it for $10/month seems unlikely.

I could see a full service on-demand news service like that would (with the current pricing structure) run at least $50/month, which most people won't pay.

I think the music industry transitioned to streaming so well, because the recording companies were already dicking over the artists from the get-go.

I see economy of scale as the key hold up here. A multi-source subscription that costs $10/month would be a no-brainer for a good number of subscribers but such an offering would immediately destroy the current subscriber base for publications like the NYT, Washington Post, Atlantic, etc. No one would continue to pay $10/month for one, when they could pay $10/month for all.

That would then mean that the $10/month all-you-can-eat plan would need to gain enough subscribers to offset the lost revenue from the old plan. Realistically it would have to result a 5 to 1 increase in new subscribers.

So you'd have to go back to an all-inclusive plan that is a discount over the individual plans but not a HUGE discount (let's say 20-35%). But then would that be compelling enough?

I'm sure that didn't hurt, but it was also helped by the fact that each song retains it's value long after creation - that's less true with news.

It took about 10 years longer than it should have. I'm also pretty sure that if piracy was something that could be effectively stopped - they'd raise their rates a thousand-fold.

Yes. Current pricing is based on the number of people paying for the provided service. The marginal cost per subscriber is negligible so it's fair to assume the price would go down if those services could attract more subscribers. It's also fair to assume subscriptions would increase if customers got access to more publications for the same price.

There's also a big difference between a 1-time reading of news in comparison to music which is often repeated, timeless and can have a deep impact on your life and memories.

Even if an easy news bundle service existed, the cost isnt the problem, it's the fact that society has become used to digital news being free - turning that around will be a massive effort.