"Premium" service won't work (was: Question for Clay and others)

[Russell Turpin]

Andy Armstrong writes:
>A mechanism must surely already exist under which you can pay to 
>periodically top up a shared account which is then debited by various 
>micropayments ..

I think this is the wrong model also. I don't want to know
how much different publishers charge for different pieces
of content, nor do I want to keep track of how much I'm
spending for content. These are both frictions. What I want
is to pay some fixed amount -- say, $40 a year -- for a
level of service -- "premium with geek and business stuff"
-- and know that I will get 95% or more of the exclusive
content I would not otherwise. The aggregator should figure
out how to pay publishers, based on relative reader
downloads. The publishers should accept the burden of
putting out material that keeps attracting the aggregator's
readers, and the risk of reduced revenue when they fail
that.

Robert Thau writes:
>This argument is awfully general --- it applies not only to the premium 
>model, a la Salon, but also pure for-pay models, like the Wall Street 
>Journal's, which is a few years old now. .. For that matter, it would seem 
>to argue
>that print subscriptions are doomed, in the long run, since subscribing to 
>those is even more of a hassle...

Print subscriptions have always been a hard row. For the
most part, people subscribe to specialty magazines that
are tailored to their interest. Note, also, the importance
of aggregators for print magazines. The sole purpose of
Publisher's Clearinghouse is to sell you multiple, cheap
subscriptions to magazines that you would not individually
take, except to provide reading material in a waiting room.

The Web makes it easier for people to choose alternatives.
If I don't subscribe to sailing magazines, none of them
show up in my mailbox. If I don't subscribe to a "premium"
sailing website, it's easy to choose a free one instead.
For "premium" or subscription to work broadly on the web,
I think it has to be made very, very easy for the consumer.
That's not to say that a few publishers won't be successful
with it anyway. But one or two successes don't change the
fact that the entire field is hurting.

Russell

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