It is only a matter of time until people are paying for content that in recent years has been available at no charge via the Internet.
In fact, the majority of millennials, ages 18-34, are paying for news and entertainment in one form or another, according to the American Press Institute, citing a Media Insight Project study. API notes that the millennials’ parents may be footing the bill in some cases.
However, the main takeaway is that people, even younger ones, realize that information is not always free. This is important for a number of businesses that deliver directly to consumers.
Some information is overpriced, and technology is changing this — think cable and satellite television bundles being challenged by television streaming devices and platforms.
Amazon recognizes this and is shifting to a paid platform for its podcasts. As of this month, its audio books service, Audible, is charging $4.95 per month for access to Channels, a selection of ad-free original podcasts, comedy performances and audio renditions of written articles, according to Bloomberg News.
This is a paradigm shift in the podcast market dominated by Apple, which offers several hundred thousand podcasts for free through its app.
Audible can be likened to Spotify, which charges a nominal monthly rate for unlimited access to a catalog of music and comedy.
Producing content has always taken money, but, honestly, subscribers have rarely paid for the full cost of the content. With newspapers and magazines, subscribers in many cases were merely covering the cost of print and distribution. Advertising revenue covered the actual cost of producing the content, as noted by Greg Satell in a Forbes article back in 2014.
“Publishers were happy to subsidize the costs for print and distribution because they were making so much money from advertising. So free distribution on the Web is, in most cases, a step up for the publishing industry. It eliminates a major cost center,” Satell argues.
But, we can’t overlook the fact that even if subscribers’ fees do not cover the full cost of production, content providers lean on subscription numbers to attract advertisers, when a business model requires advertisements.
So, back to first base we go: People must understand that quality content is not free — it never has been, whether consumers themselves paid for it or not. Thus, we will likely continue to see more content providers move to some sort of subscriber- or membership-based model.
It’s easy to forget that on the other end of the broadband is a writer, musician, videographer or other creative putting in hours of work into content that can be digested in a few minutes by a consumer online.