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July 12, 2007 at 2:35 am
Patrick
“whereby every single piece of content entering the cloud will only be consumed at a monetary price of $0.00 to the user.”
I think content as a whole will be free but content pieces will still be sold in certain cases. Higher resolution video, earlier release, “support us” buttons, micropatrons (à la Kottke and Gruber), associated products and innovative sponsorships (Galacticast), etc.
Pricing won’t be high enough to support layers of management and big corps. but will / do let content producers make a living through a direct relationship with their readers / listeners / viewers. Payment becomes more of a “thank you and keep entertaining me” than a “pay the gatekeeper” type of transaction.
July 12, 2007 at 4:02 am
Mat
Thanks for the thought Pat. I think you’re right. There are some situations, as you outline, where small payments that signal your deep interest in the content will be valuable.
This area though, micropayments, while nice in theory and while it has _some_ minor precedent for success, has not been shown to work on a large scale – yet. (Unless you count of course, iTunes – but music will move away from that soon). So I suppose my take on the matter is “the jury’s still out” but I don’t discount it.
July 12, 2007 at 9:02 pm
Patrick
Well “micropatron” doesn’t necessarily imply micropayment. For example I payed for both Kottke’s one year experiment (in my case more as a thank you for many years before than specifically as a subscription for the following year) and I’ve payed for Daring Fireball (Mac site) for 3 years. In both cases amounts in the $20-30 so not micropayments.
I’d say buying a CD at a show for a band you found online or even online through a small shop also qualifies in that type of support. Sponsorships for Galacticast are from $5 to $20K so, although $5 is probably right on the limit, not micropayments here either.
Anyway, I’m nitpicking, we agree on the basics.