News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:How Bitcoin Can Save Publishing by crazygringo on Monday October 07, 2013 @07:49PM (#6512105)
I've thought that for years. But not only has nobody done it, I've never seen any of the publishers even try. I thought it would have happened by now.

I'm wondering why not. Spotify did it for music. Netflix does it for some movies/TV. Why are periodicals not?

Heck, if airlines can band together in FF mile "alliances", why can't newspapers do the same? It would be a good way to start -- subscribe to NYT and get Washington Post + 20 other city newspapers.

Re:How Bitcoin Can Save Publishing by joanofarf on Monday October 07, 2013 @08:24PM (#6512208)
Netflix replaces DVD rentals and purchases, not the initial product, which is the release in theatres or the initial broadcast on television. You can still make money in the box office and on advertising. For news outlets and periodicals, their websites replace their initial product, the publication itself. Spotify falls somewhere between the two: streaming music can replace the intial product of a CD, LP or download, but it's also allows you to offer a new product to people that would never purchase the initial one.

Another point to consider is that piracy has had a huge impact on the music, movie and television industries. They had to compete against free. Netflix and Spotify may make less money for labels and producers than DVD and CD sales did, but it's more than they get from everyone who would torrent their stuff instead.

If you bundled unlimited access to multiple publications for a monthly fee, and distributed payouts to publishers based on their share of views/reads, you'd just end up reproducing the current situation, where the competition for pageviews is a race to the bottom.