Pew study hints at what Web users will pay for
(AP) -- The Web may seem like the land of something for nothing. Free video. Free news. Even free tools such as word processing and spreadsheets.
But almost two-thirds of adult Internet users in the U.S. have paid for access to at least one of these intangible items online, according to a new survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
Whether people will pay for different types of material on the Web is among the most pressing questions facing media companies in the 21st century.
As people shift their attention to the Internet from more traditional ways of enjoying media, the companies that provide everything from movies to mystery novels want to make sure they can still get paid for what they do. The big TV networks want viewers to pay for full access to episodes of their favorite shows. Newspaper companies want readers to pay for news. Book publishers want higher prices for digital editions of new releases.
The new figures from Pew suggest paying for content online is at least not a completely foreign idea for most people.
About a third of respondents said they have paid for digital music. Same for software.
Behind that came mobile apps for cell phones or tablet computers at 21 percent. Then digital games at 19 percent and newspaper, magazine or journal articles at 18 percent.
The survey found that among people who paid for content, the typical user spent about $10 a month. However, there are some extremely high-end users, such that the average among those who have paid for content is about $47 a month. That includes subscriptions and individual files downloaded or accessed.
The survey of 755 Internet users in the U.S. was conducted Oct. 28-Nov. 1 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
©2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Dec 30, 2010
Rank: 4.6 / 5 (9)
Dec 30, 2010
Rank: 5 / 5 (5)
I will and do buy digital restriction management DRM FREE content, content of which I become the proprietor. I use open source software where ever possible.
A differentiation of DRM music from copyrighted NYT might be challenging, but, moot because all NYT content will appear elsewhere and DRM music is post-modern trash.
Dec 30, 2010
Rank: 5 / 5 (8)
Dec 30, 2010
Rank: 5 / 5 (7)
How do you determine the price of this content?
Since it's not made artifically scarce, the supply is basically infinite while the demand is not. By all means the price should approach zero, so what's the point of paying for it? But then, who pays the author?
The point is, that you shouldn't pay for it. The digital copies are worthless - the work put into making the original is the only thing that matters; if we pay for the subsequent copies, we're basically giving the author a money printing machine that completely disconnects the value of the work from the price we collectively pay for the work and breaks the market mechanism.
We no longer know what everything is worth, so we end up paying too much. Every song is 99 cents, good or bad. Eventually enough people will buy it to make a profit regardless.
That's why this whole thing has to be re-thought.
Dec 30, 2010
Rank: 5 / 5 (6)
What I'm not willing to do is pay the same amount of money for a digital book (which costs essentially NOTHING for the company to create and distribute) as I am for a paperback (which costs almost as much to create an distribute as the list price on the cover suggests).
I'll buy an e-book for 1 dollar *if* almost all of that money goes to the author. I won't buy it for 14 dollars only to see 1 dollar of that go to the author and 13 dollars go to the unbelievably greedy (and completely unnecessary) publisher.
Dec 30, 2010
Rank: 5 / 5 (7)
So while I think that most people understand that content creators need to be paid (or else they'll stop creating (as much) content), I also think that people don't want to see the vast majority of the money they pay for content sopped up by useless third parties, to the detriment of both the consumers and the creators of the content in question.
Dec 30, 2010
Rank: 1 / 5 (1)
Dec 30, 2010
Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
but you pay the ISP for providing access to other peoples content.
and thats more than 10 bucks a month.
its like in medieval times when somebody took money for letting you cross a bridge.
i say free the infrastructure and let authors earn their money, hence 'enlightenment'!
Dec 30, 2010
Rank: not rated yet
What sort of sucker spends $47 a month on this crap?
Jan 01, 2011
Rank: not rated yet
I am fairly certain numbers would indicate home internet users pay for far less.
Jan 02, 2011
Rank: 3 / 5 (2)
The situation you are talking about is caused by transition to Type 1 communication and economy.
Information technology is essentially approaching "perfect competition". We can entertain ourselves with anything really, and no longer need (or want) million dollar circus clowns. Due to the explosion in technology, economics as we know it is collapsing. These millionaire clowns will no longer be able to rake in this sort of money just to sing a 3 minute song about leaving their boyfriend/girlfriend.