Per this article many titans of publishing and media think this “free” web content stuff is an unsustainable scenario and are determined to make web users pay for content … somehow.
Is this a valid position? Is the era of free web content coming to an end?
I seriously doubt it. They’d have to find a way to force people to charge money. Good luck doing that in a democracy.
It would take a lot more enforcement. I (and many other internet users) will search for HOURS to find something available on a pay site for free (not necessarily illegal stuff, to be clear, but sometimes pay sites will offer stuff on obscure sites for free as a sort of “demo” or merely act as “finder services” if you can track down the stuff otherwise). As computer literacy increases I think more and more people will become privy with ways of circumventing a lot of protections (and by that I mean “finding a no-name site that hosts torrents”) or doing what I do, for varying degrees of legal depending on the person. Because of this unless mandatory upload policing experiences a huge reform we’re not likely to see this for fear of losing subscribers to the ever increasing shady parts of the internet run by the numberless open-source “I can crack your protection in 15 seconds” crowd.
I think what MAY catch on is the “subscription for benefits” or “pay as you like” model. Sort of like you can remove ads for a fee on this site, or possibly like IGN where you can download their strategy guides if you’re a premium member, with one or two exclusive videos that are available to premiums only. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see a bi-weekly double-secret super-ultra article/video/game you have to buy for $0.99 (or five bucks, or whatever) in order to read it (with unlimited access from then on out).
The benefit is most of the content is still there for free, but people who really like the stuff can pay for more of it, or stuff of a slightly higher quality. Or alternatively frequent users can play for uninterrupted video streaming on Hulu (no ads) or uncapped server speeds (a lot of modern download sites do that actually).
You’ll certainly see a lot more ways to get your cash in the future, but a cold dead end to free content I highly doubt.
Things that used to be free, like downloading music, have found sustainable ways to encourage payment.
I think there is scope for other parts of the internet to charge, reasonably, providing they fairly return the favour with genuine content worth the outlay. Sites that provide unique and sought after content have the advantage for that model to work.
Let’s see what the News sites propose. I doubt it will be what people want.
There are some definite issues, one is new artists. The internet is wonderful in terms of finding new things you enjoy, I never would have ventured into That Guy With the Glasses or the Angry Video Game Nerd if I had to pay $15/month or $5 a video, even if they gave an advertisement video (granted now that I’ve been with them for months, I probably would, but I’d wager I’m a minority). And of course, the biggest issue with this is that once you’re free how do you get to be a pay site without half your fanbase rebelling? I’m sure New York Times, CNN, or any other giant mogul could probably pull it off with a little fuss that ultimately goes nowhere, but about three quarters of the internet doesn’t have the comfort these guys have that their audience is rabidly devoted to them or at the very least have become such a necessity that it’s almost required you have access in some form, but even slightly smaller sites like Gamespot, Joystiq, or even some smaller mainstream-media-like alternative news dump sites could all but atrophy if they followed suit. Maybe if the entire internet went pay at once, but good luck with that.
It’s not just people cracking things or putting out free samples. It’s the fact that there’s plenty of people on the web that make and distribute what they themselves make for free for various reasons. Yes, there’s also plenty of stuff that takes whole teams of paid professionals to make, and that naturally gets charged for; but I see no reason to think that the people who give stuff away are going to vanish unless they are forced to.
Yes; I think that a lot of the people who are complaining about the evils of free content/piracy/etc are in denial about the likelihood that the reason people aren’t buying their product isn’t because they are all thieves or cheapskates, but because the product being offered isn’t desired.
And there’s a big difference between finding a profitable business model for, say, news online and between the “end of free content”. What they are claiming is like people in the old days hypothetically claiming that the existence of newspapers would eliminate gossip, or the existence of professional photographers would eliminate amateur photographers. The only way you’d see free content end on the Internet would be to make it outright illegal to NOT charge for it, or pump up the costs of using it to the point that private citizens can’t afford it.
The problem is that there’s going to be so much free content floating around.
If you’re a young cartoonist, and you make a new web comic, how can you charge for it if no one knows about it or cares about it? People might pay for Doonesbury, but they aren’t going to pay to read the first installment of Lemurbury.
I have to distribute Lemurbury for free until I establish an audience. Only when everyone is saying “You’ve got to read Lemurbury, it’s brilliant!” could I charge for it. But the problem is that if I start charging, then people are going to stop linking. “You told me to read the latest Lemurbury, but then it said I’d have to pay $15.00 to read it, so forget it”.
Now suddenly instead of Lemurbury being a hot up and coming property, it’s now a dying property because only the people who already care about Lemurbury read it.
I can’t compete against the free webcomics. Either I choose free and widely distributed, or I chose pay and narrowly distributed. And narrowly distributed means that I get almost nothing from pay anyway.
As long free content providers give a “good enough” experience, there’s no way pay content providers can survive. Sure, they might be better than the free stuff, but if the free stuff is pretty good then the marginal utility of paying for slightly better stuff is nonexistent.
Television and radio survived for decades by giving away their content. I don’t see why it’s so impossible for internet content to be given away for free either.
My guess (which is all it is) is that content will continue to be free, because it is free to produce the incremental unit. Sure, it costs money to create a song, story, artwork, etc. But making one more copy for the next customer is free. As long as there is a huge market (and world wide, there is), even meagre advertising revenues will sustain the system.
However, I won’t be surprised to see TAXES rear their ugly head before long. This is one industry that has escaped the dip of the government beak for far longer than usual, and the various taxing bodies around the worlds are very resourceful when it comes to finding ways of demanding their cut…TRM
Often times web providers fail to realize the reason they are getting traffic is because it IS free.
Look I’ll watch YouTube vids because they are free, I won’t pay for it. This site is a great example. When you had to pay for the SD I didn’t. Why? Because there are too many other sites I don’t have to pay for that can occupy my time.
Furthermore it kills the quality. If you have entertaining posters that leave, you aren’t gonna get the quality and the people that do pay are gonna get miffed, 'cause the content suffers.
It’s kind of like a bar, especially in the gay community. Bar owners often give goodlooking young guys free drinks. Why? 'Cause it draws in the older guys who WILL pay. If you said “Sorry pay for it, the young goodlooking guys go elsewhere.” Suddenly your bar if full of old men paying for drinks and nothing else. Well these guys want some young good looking guys, so they stop coming.
So it’s a cycle. I read the New York Times online because it’s free, if it wasn’t free I wouldn’t read it.
Too often people view things like reads and downloads as lost revenue, when in fact it isn’t. People may download music, but if it weren’t free they wouldn’t.
I think of it with my used CDs. In the last decade I’ve probably bought about 10 CDs new, the rest I get at used CD stores. Some CDs I’ll buy simply because they are cheap. An Amy Grant CD for 50¢ I’ll buy, but the fact is the record company is apt to say “See if it weren’t for used CD stores, we would’ve sold Mark that CD at cost.” That’s the wrong way of thinking, if it was more than 50¢ I wouldn’t have bought it used or new.
I understand it costs to host things, but there is nothing you get in the NYT you can’t get over the air for free on TV. Long gone are the in-depth analysis of newspaper, it’s just more of the same story presented in different words.
It would ultimately be a good thing if web content went to a pay system. As it is content providers cannot sustain their models without some sort of revenue stream. They have expenses that they have to pay. It would also mean that providers of content at every level would be able to find revenue streams. If you are able to put together a website and generate some revenue from it then it’s an incentive to keep doing it. It would generate more jobs and keep quality content in existance. Part of the reason that the first bubble happened was because people thought that they could have an entirely ad revenue supported model without an actual product underneath it. It didn’t work out too well, and still doesn’t work too well.
You’re basing your counter-argument off of the assumption that you are going to overcharge. Maybe you charge $ 5 year to read lemurbury.
I think it is going to be more of a hybrid system. I’ll use Penny Arcade as an example. They post a webcomic for free three times a week with free access to the archives and free access to a forum. But they also provide a store for merchandise directly tied to their free content. Proceeds from these sales help them keep the free stuf free.
There’s an old saying: Writers and prostitutes have the same problem – talented amateurs who are willing to give away they work for free.
It’s the same with the Internet.
But the key fact that cannot be handwaved away is: you cannot survive as an artist unless someone is willing to pay you for your art.
Going into media, you cannot get actual news unless someone is willing to pay to hire people to ferret it out. Otherwise, it’s just press releases and opinion pieces (all-too-often with no facts to back it up).
Now, the problem is how to find ways to get people to pay for your work. Ads are one way, but only work for popular sites. Same with subscriptions. But if you want quality on the Internet, someone has got to pay for it.
How about something like MichaelTotten.com. He’s an independent journalist who covers the middle east and other funspots. He pays for it all via donations. Like what he does, send him some money, just like NPR. No idea if this is a viable business model, but it is possible we’ll see two tiered pricing. A ubiquitous free level, where nothing is charged. And another tier where you don’t pay for content, but for X. X could be stuff like merch, events hosted by the author, and other random useless but cool stuff.
People already become members of orgs like the NRA or the Sierra Club, because they like what the org does. They subscribe to political magazines not because they want the content, but because they want to subsidize the movement. And so on.
When you’re looking at worldwide distribution, if 1% of your audience chips in a few bucks every month or so you might be able to make enough money to turn pro.
It seems to me some of the most successful online organizations are free. Google, Wikipedia, Facebook. I don’t see them being not free in the near future.
It’s all about the freemium content, baby.
They are free in the same way that your local broadcast television content is free. Which is to say, it’s not. You pay for it every time you go to the market and buy Triscuits.
I guess Wikipedia is like PBS - they run annoying fund raisers every few weeks reminding you that the content you’re enjoying is viewer-supported and please won’t you give generously now? A donation of $40 will get you this handsome tote bag made from genuine burlap!
Television and radio never gave away their content. They survived by selling chunks of product (airtime) to advertisers. And people accepted it because it was the only place they could get that content and there was no way to block out the advertising.
These days you can pay for advertising-free content (HBO) or you can wait for the content to come out without advertsing and pay for that (DVD) or you can pay for a TiVo and fast-forward through the ads – but you’ll still see the paid product placements.
Any way you do it, however, it ain’t free.
Indeed, this is the problem with all those torrent sites. They make advertising revenue for providing music and movies to you, but aren’t paying a percentage of that back to the creators.
If somebody starts charging the ISP’s for bandwidth used, then costs could be paid by the user.
Otherwise, let me say, “hah!”