Nah, people used to pay buskers with pocket change.

That happens less because they don't carry cash anymore.

It's the same thing here.

If it was easier to do, more people would do it.

Look at Onlyfans. People pay good money for what you can get for free.

Difference is that the examples you gave don't have the expectation of being free. Online news articles do.

I don't think so, the media has been pretty resistant to providing this kind of model. If they allow you to read a single article cheaply it would mean a lot of lost subscriptions and it isn't easy to price individual pieces of content.

Yet, "free to play" games are ludicrously profitable. Surely a large part of that is addiction, but there also is a tech problem here. If paying for a newspaper article has lots of friction (sign up here, confirm email, credit card, 2 factor confirmation, now you have a subscription instead of just buying; cancelation only by carrier pigeon at midnight), then no way.

That is also why the Google and apple appstores can charge such large fees. Sure, buying on websites and sideloading are possible but much higher friction -> many customers simply won't bother.