Simon Owens's Tech and Media - A better alternative to micropayments
A better alternative to micropaymentsPLUS: The platforms aren’t the only ones to blame for declining publisher trafficWelcome! I'm Simon Owens and this is my media industry newsletter. If you've received it, then you either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you. If you fit into the latter camp and want to subscribe, then you can click on this handy little button: Let’s jump into it… A better alternative to micropaymentsMicropayments will probably never work, but what about day passes? Advance Local is experimenting with charging readers between 99 cents and $3 to access a publication for a full day, and it's seeing some interesting results:
This was an idea I first saw proposed by Mark Stenberg. It’s unlikely that consumers will place much value on a single article — even if it only costs 99 cents — but they might be willing to shell out for an all-access pass that requires only a one-time payment, just as a they’ve shown a propensity to buy a single issue of a magazine or newspaper at a convenience store. The streaming era has been good for music, actuallyThere's this silly narrative you see often that Spotify is somehow bad for the music industry, when in fact the rise of streaming reversed a decline in music revenue and the industry has increased in size for nearly every year of Spotify's existence:
ICYMI: Was Randy Cassingham the first member of the Creator Economy?In 1994, he launched This is True, one of the first email newsletters, and grew it into a thriving business. Good riddance to the TikTok creator fundTikTok’s $2 billion creator fund has long been criticized for its paltry payouts, so it’s probably a good thing that it’s shutting down:
Hopefully its shuttering is a sign that the platform will continue to get more serious about a direct revenue share with creators. The early signs are encouraging. The rise of worker-owned media cooperativesSeveral journalists who all worked for the gaming outlet Kotaku have split off to launch their own media cooperative:
This is at least the third worker-owned media cooperative to emerge out of the company formerly known as Gawker Media. It's kind of cool that Gawker sprouted so many bootstrapped media startups. That might end up being its greatest legacy. How MrBeast transformed an entire economyThis is a great deep dive into how MrBeast transformed a small city in North Carolina into a kind of industry town centered around his business:
It'll be interesting to see what happens there in the next five to 10 years and whether a whole new generation of creators sprouts out of the city. Wouldn't it be crazy if it ended up becoming the next Hollywood? The platforms aren’t the only ones to blame for declining publisher trafficHave the major tech platforms deprioritized news in their algorithms? Sure. But consumers themselves are also showing a lot less interest in news content:
Let’s take this relationship to the next levelI only send this newsletter out twice a week, but I curate industry news on a daily basis. Follow me on one of these social platforms if you want your daily fix: You're currently a free subscriber to Simon Owens's Media Newsletter. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. |
Older messages
How the Sunday Long Read newsletter built a thriving membership by curating longform journalism
Tuesday, November 7, 2023
Don Van Natta Jr. and Jacob Feldman grew the newsletter to over 25000 subscribers.
Did The Verge figure out a great way to increase homepage traffic?
Friday, November 3, 2023
PLUS: More content = more traffic
How the GameDiscoverCo newsletter launched a data product for game developers
Tuesday, October 31, 2023
Simon Carless carved out a niche in the gaming industry by tracking the metrics around game releases.
The creator “middle class” does exist
Friday, October 27, 2023
PLUS: How Cameo lost its way
How the Tangle newsletter reached 77,000 readers and $624,000 in annual revenue
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
Isaac Saul wanted to create an antidote to the hyper partisan media ecosystem that dominates the web.
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