For some people, HBO Go IS too expensive. For a lot of gamers, 20 dollar games ARE too expensive. Those gamers aren't the same ones spending 500 bucks in video cards - those guys buy 60 dollar games every time they want.
You won't get anywhere near the same userbase if you offer your stuff for free, and if you offer it for 1 dollar. However, remember that advertising is at WELL BELOW $1/user. Advertising treats your userbase as if each individual is worth pennies - because they are.
Don't expect your userbase to completely transit to a pay-for-content model without huge losses. But it doesn't mean you won't profit more in the end, it all depends on what you set the price to and what your userbase is (some markets are obviously better suited for pay-for-content models).
Just because at one point the gates existed to extort customers into paying such high prices doesn't mean such prices should exist indefinitely. Change the pricing models and get rich, people do it all the time.
Musicians today have a much lower barrier to entry in making sure they earn money from their works, as they no longer need to sign in to contracts with record labels, but can sell and earn higher percentages as independents without the distribution costs and various IP terms that old school labels would have required from them - modulo the fees of payment processing and/or using a storefront service, of course.
It has always been the case that the bulk of a musician's profits come from live performances. But where back in the day one had to make the choice to be entrenched in the exclusiveness of labels, today you are free from that burden and the higher market saturation naturally leads to lower individual chances of huge successes.
But you can still make some money from recordings. Whereas before, the only thing you could hope for was earning a cult following off of tape trading or whatnot. Obviously without any financial compensation - the dime's entirely on you.
Not to anyone who's watched it become axiomatic that musicians who expect to make money from their work are talentless hacks who should be pleased to work for free, that HBO Go is "too expensive", that gamers who plow $500+ into a video card "can't afford" $20 games, or indeed that people in creative industries in general should make money from something other than their main endeavour and that nicking their stuff and passing it on is "exposure" more valuable than mere money.
No matter what writers, musicians, et al produce, their is a constant insistance that any price above $0 is brigandry.