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July 29, 2009
The Problem with an iTunes for News
There's an interesting paragraph in Cory Doctorow's review of Chris Anderson's new book Free in The Guardian, that has some relevance for those proposing an iTunes-style model for news:
Likewise, iTunes sells a lot of music that you can get for free on the internet, so they're not really selling the music, they're selling the service of getting the music without having to muck about with P2P software and unsure quality.
It's not the whole story, as there's a "reward the artist" element in play, too, but it is an insightful comment.
The problem the news business has is that high-quality free news is significantly easier to find than free music, and is legal, too. Making it harder to find wouldn't just require all the existing newspapers to push their content behind a paywall, but all the related bloggers and other community publishers, too. If that doesn't happen, there just isn't a compelling gap in the market for a paid approach to making news easier to find.
Update: There's an interview with Anderson about his views on the future of news on Salon.
The problem the news business has is that high-quality free news is significantly easier to find than free music, and is legal, too. Making it harder to find wouldn't just require all the existing newspapers to push their content behind a paywall, but all the related bloggers and other community publishers, too. If that doesn't happen, there just isn't a compelling gap in the market for a paid approach to making news easier to find.
Update: There's an interview with Anderson about his views on the future of news on Salon.
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