Chris Harris recently wrote a piece on Jalopnik regarding the dismal state of print/web/video content and revenues.
His print solution:
What’s sensible? $10 is sensible. You’ll pay $5 for a beer that disappears in a matter if minutes, a magazine is worth more than that. If a US car magazine can sell for $10, it doesn’t need to shift 500,000 copies a month, and that’s when you can change the model.
I could talk at great length about the virtues of actually holding a reading device like a book or magazine in lieu of staring at pixelated versions of which. Here, Harris skips right past that hyperbole and slaps us in the face with the simplicity of it all: When was $10 ever too much to pay for a magazine full of content I want to read?
His web solution is less plain, but also less optimistic for sure:
The notion of an internet where free isn’t an automatic assumption? Not impossible, but certainly a few decade’s work.
Exactly. For whatever reason, we consumers have yet to equate physical goods with digital goods when it comes to the value proposition. No one truly knows why. There are whole industries devoted to the protection and commercialization of ideas and concepts, not just physical things. Why should digital media be any different?
Harris even touches a bit on /Drive+, which boasts a $3.99/month paywall (to which I gladly subscribe):
Five bucks a month seems sensible for something you enjoy, but if you need seven of those subs a month, many people will baulk at the cost. Lumping yourself in with other verticals might not provide any safety in numbers either. And if you’re me, from the content creation side, persuading Porsche to let you drive the new hyper car when your videos reach 12,000 people is not an easy task.
He doesn’t have the answers any more than I do. What does seem to be true, however, is just how quickly revenue models change. The iOS App Store has been around barely more than half a decade, and it’s success stories today exist with completely different business models than what was the norm when the App Store was conceived.
Anecdotally, I am almost as pessimistic as Harris. I have talked with many family members and friends, and almost without fail, they have a completely different take on the value of digital goods than myself. The look on their faces is one of puzzlement when I ask quite plainly why they would never consider paying for something digital. In other instances, I ask why they so often choose the free app vs the paid one, when the paid one is clearly better. Is an application that is used day in and day out not worth the one-time (or recurring) nominal price of a Starbucks drink? Apparently not. How disheartening. They would be hard-pressed to pay a monthly fee for Feedbin. Or to Droplr. Or to BackBlaze.
In ten years time, I hope /Drive is still doing its thing. I wish the same for Jalopnik. Now go out there and support the media outlets you adore. They need you.