Most people don't actively want ads. Ads are just too big of a revenue stream for most for-profit companies to ignore. A benefit of the original TV cable subscription was not having ads (which drove initial adoption!), but then networks saw they could charge people for cable AND show them ads with little recourse for the customer, so they did.
Also the Spotify and Youtube examples you presented are strictly subscription vs. no subscription. There can be no consumer enthusiasm for an option on the web that doesn't exist! Micropayments would add a different option with different trade-offs.
These are older examples, but they still exist. When you buy a newspaper for example, your options are not only free vs. monthly/yearly subscription, as is currently the case in your examples. They can pay a small amount for a single issue. When you buy a phone card, you can pay a small(?) amount for single calls vs. having a dedicated phone line subscription.
More recently, when you have a Starbucks card, you can use it for small purchases instead of "subscribing" to Starbucks. It's easy to use and works with the apps and online ordering. It also avoids the massive fees that payment processors collect which usually make <$1 contributions next to worthless.
Currently the most similar system to a "micropayment support infrastructure" I can think of is Patreon, which some people do actually use to work on projects full time.
I can't rationalize those choices, even, it's just what I've done, empirically.
A significant number of people do subscribe to spotify, and some is buy the ad-free kindles.
sigh, phone keyboards and a lack of proof-reading.
Yes, it does seem that way because nobody actually says, "Please please give ads because I love them!"
Instead, the correct way to frame what users really want is to separate "stated preferences" from revealed preferences.[1]
The stated preference, of course, is for users to complain about ads and loathe them. Another source of stated preferences is marketing surveys and questionnaires.
But the revealed preference is different because it's the observation of what really people do instead of what they say they'll do. Most would rather watch youtube for free rather than pay $9.99 for YoutubeRed. Same for Spotify free tier with ads rather than $120 a year Spotify Premium. Most would rather read the 5 free articles with ads from New York Times rather than pay a subscription.
Another interesting example was Amazon's Kindle e-reader. They had a version with ads (what they call "with Special Offers") for $114 ... and one without ads for $139. More buyers chose the device with ads.[2]
Did Kindle users want ads?!? Of course not. But they valued the $25 savings more than the the ad-free experience. Basically, they "do want ads" -- in a roundabout way.
The micropayments enthusiasm doesn't really change the consumers' priority of "free with ads" over "pay for zero ads". People really really like the economics of "free". Unless micropayments is $0.00 -- which would be an oxymoron -- it will always have that economic handicap to widespread adoption.
>Presumably the micropayments have fewer (or at least different) unintended consequences.
One unintended consequence is that authors and creators end up with less revenue if they restrict their output to only subscribers making micropayments.
[1] https://www.beyondcostplus.com/blog/stated-vs-revealed-prefe...
[2] https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2385398,00.asp