With all this controversy over online newspaper payments and the fors and againsts of both sides of the story, a thought occurred to me yesterday which I've yet to find an argument against (this is usually quite rare).
Are newspapers learning lessons from the rising success of Spotify - the online service that allows you to listen to endless songs for free if partnered with advertising space, or alternatively pay a monthly premium to wipe those adverts out completely? Because to me this seems like a perfect solution to please all parties.
Yes, you can read the news online for free, but advertising space is going to be bigger, more intrusive and more forceful (a 5 second add before each article for example) but if you want to clear all that and focus just on the news then pay the premium to wipe it out. Advertisers get greater scope to promote, papers get a more secure subscription fee and consumers can choose their preference without being put off by one or the other.
In a way, the model already exists in the case of the 'freebie' local papers that are ram packed with ads so why could this not be transferred online? Of course, the obstacle of free content from sites like the BBC still remains and the product the papers deliver would still have to improve but Spotify are proving that this model is a perfect way to sit on the fence and please everyone. If nothing else, it's certainly one to consider.
1 comments:
I think that it is right that we should pay for some types of content. Quality news and analysis is one of those. This does not mean that "common" news and summaries couldn't be provided
free (ad supported).
But the problem is how do you pay? How does the payment system work? I don't want to subscribe to some newspaper for a month/year just to get at the article I'm interested in, (stories about a specific event, an election or the budget). I also might want to get those stories from a selection of sources. Does that mean I need to subscribe to all of them for a month/year just to get that one set of stories?
That's the difference between Spotify and newspapers. Spotify has all music (near enough). Different papers have different perspectives and depth of analysis.
The other technical issue is that the payment has to be large enough for the source to justify the card charges.
This is what the talk about micro-payments is about. I think we need a Paypal, Amazon, Google etc that you probably already trust with your payment details with, to allow newspapers to have a "pay with" button that sends the charge to your payment account. The payment system can aggregate the payments into values that are efficient to collect via a credit card (or you hold a balance with them).
There are lots of technical issues around security and ensuring that the electronic funds transfers behind the scenes are auditable etc.
I'm sure we'll see something like this from a big player soon.
Post a Comment