Content just isn’t worth a lot because nobody really needs any particular piece of information all that much; and if they do really need a piece of information, chances are it is available in many places.
Sure, but we all have subscription fatigue. Say I subscribe to the New York Times and the Atlantic. But sometimes I like to read articles in the Washington Post or the New Yorker. How many subscriptions are enough? It's just like streaming fragmentation with Netflix, Apple+, Amazon Prime, Hulu, ad infinitum.
Re:Flattr is closing down
by JoshTriplett on Thursday January 18, 2024 @06:34PM
(#39049498)
That "works", somewhat, if you want to get all your news from one place. That's the traditional newspaper model: most people don't get a dozen papers delivered.
But many people do read articles on dozens of different sites in a month. And that's a good thing; a world in which people get their news from a variety of different sources seems like a fundamentally better world.
Newspapers and news subscriptions were financially viable in a world where most people had a subscription and that's where they got most of their news. They may not be financially viable in a world in which most people don't have or want to read only one or two sources of news. And that's fine.
Don’t get hung up on the price I listed, it’s just an example which is dependent on publication and article length/content.
Your argument is pretty weak too. Of course I could subscribe but obviously I don’t for any number of reasons. I am saying I wish I could pay on a per article price. Sorry for wanting to pay for the content I consume.
But there is "something along those lines"; it's called becoming a paid subscriber. When you amortize the expense across every article, you may even be getting a deal!
The fact that the example expense you'd be willing to incur to read content you actually enjoy is ten cents speaks to why this model won't work.