Adonis Diaries

Websites to cost users by 2010; (October 18, 2009)

            The search for an economic model to generate profit is driving many web developers to charging users for information gathering. It seems that publicity is no longer generating enough resources for the printed media. In 1998, 48% of the US readers got their information from papers versus 13% on the web. Ten years later, 37 % use the web versus 34% paper journals and dailies. 

            The successes of iTunes Stores and Amazon is for selling digital music on the Web are encouraging movie and written press businesses to testing paying diffusion modes.  Two years ago, selling music records on the web amounted to 20% of the music market. In 2008, 1.4 billion records were sold on the web; by 2010 this mode of selling will far surpassing the physical CD sales. Last FM, Yes FM, and Spotify are revolutionizing the market and making “streaming” the preferred option for consumers; the paying option does not contain advertisement.  Virgin Media is offering a new legal telecharging “for the price of two CDs you may have access to the entire music catalogue.”

            Daniel Ek, founder of Spotify proclaimed that “the consumer doesn’t give a damn of owning or telecharging CD; what he wants is to be able to have access.”  The networks for sharing files via Torrent and eMule, the “streaming”, or direct telecharging sites such as Rapidshare and Megaupload have doubled business for the second year in a raw.

            Browsing cultural, editorials, and special investigative pieces in dailies will no longer be free. The New York Times got on the web in 2005 and charged its subscribers; it backed off two years later and is now reconsidering payment. Google is receiving advertising benefits through Adsense and Adwords to Google News; the information associations are charging Google to benefit from the labor of other journalists without their consent.  Google is studying a formula and it presented it to Newspapers Association of America that would allow dailies to charge its Google’s users for articles read.

            Louis Gordon Crovitz, co-founder of Journalism Online stated: “The future is for mix models of free and charged. Authors of numerical books will receive their dues.”  Rupert Murdoch, mogul of News Corporation which include Wall Street Journal, Times, and the Sun is leading the charge on account that “an industry that offer its product for free cannibalizes its capacity for producing good journalism.”

            The Economist is going to charge micro payments within 6 months; basically there will be two kinds of payments: Essential formula at half price of the Premiere formula where users can read the journals the night before publication.

            Paramount, Lions Gate, and Metro-Goldwyn-Myer are uniting to launch on the Epix market high definition movies in streaming mode. YouTube is negociating similar deals with the studios of Hollywood.