Today is the first day in 2 years that New York Times online content is available free of charge to readers. The Times dropped their subscription service in favor of an ad-based revenue model (you’ll see the ad when you click the article link below). The move by the Times indicates that 1) ad-based revenue models will supplant subscription models simply because advertisers are willing to pay more for access to eyeballs than consumers are willing to pay for the access in the first place, and 2) that Rupert Murdoch threats to make Wall Street Journal online content available for free is a huge competitive attack.
It’s an interesting comment on things to come when one of the first articles I can link to in this free online content reign is an article on another huge media concern and its forays into a major content subscription service, and on the heals of another Times article on Rick Rubin where Rubin suggests subscription services could be a component of a new record business model.
I personally believe ad revenue models will work for print and video because consumers have been raised to expect it (read a magazine, watch TV, see an ad). But neither ads, nor subscriptions will work for music because consumers have little consciousness of those models with that medium. And that fact will drive major media companies mad until they sink their music divisions into a tarpit of manufactured offerings best suited for their mass media machines. It’s working for ABC Disney, why not everywhere else?
NBC to Offer Downloads of Its Shows
By BILL CARTER
Published: September 20, 2007NBC Universal said yesterday that it would soon permit consumers to download many of NBC’s most popular programs free to personal computers and other devices for one week immediately after their broadcasts. The service, which is set to start in November after a test period in October, comes less than three weeks after NBC Universal said it was pulling its programs out of the highly successful iTunes service of Apple Inc. That partnership fell apart because of a dispute over Apple’s iTunes pricing policies and what NBC executives said were concerns about lack of piracy protection.
Notice that last line; “That partnership fell apart because of a dispute over Apple’s iTunes pricing policies and what NBC executives said were concerns about lack of piracy protection.” With this new action, NBC Universal is following a similar path of Universal Music in creating its own content delivery service to compete with iTunes. And the bottomline seems to be more about profit, than pricing and privacy.
Read the full article here