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

[Andy Armstrong]

Russell Turpin wrote:
> 
> 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.

Is that because you don't want cost to be a factor in whether you choose
to read something or not, or because you just don't want the hassle of
thinking about it?

-- 
Andy Armstrong, Tagish