[haneefmubarak]

Have you guys considered a Spotify style subscription model? Say, where I as a reader would pay a fixed monthly fee but would then be able to read as many articles as I wanted from the various sources you guys support throughout the month? Of course, the fees would be split across the publishers proportional to the time or number of articles I read from each.

If you have, what were some of the pros and cons you saw in something like that?

[alexandernl]

Founder of Blendle here. We have, but newspaper publishers don't like this idea. They're too afraid offering a monthly fee will result in a lot of cancelled subscriptions. And subscriptions are a big part of their revenue.

[jacques_chester]

> Of course, the fees would be split across the publishers proportional to the time or number of articles I read from each.

This has been tried several times without success (Kachingle, Contenture, Readability), possibly because it was all being done on the open web or through proxies, for too little money.

The main problem is that tracking visits on the open web is unreliable with the current approaches.

Blendle arrived after tablets were common, so they can use the proxy model, and they're not doing it on subscription so they don't need to establish a viable minimum monthly amount in the mind of consumers. On the other hand they face the taxi fare problem, which subscription schemes don't.

I started work on my own approach in 2008 and so became waylaid by the tracking problem; I have a patent pending but it's possible I simply moved too late.

On the other hand, my design works for the open web, for mobile, for apps, for games, for music, basically for anything without first needing the protection and support of a walled garden like an app talking to a de facto proxy server.

[girvo]

> taxi fare problem

Do you mind expanding on that?

[jacques_chester]

I poked around on Google, can't find where I first saw the term.

Many people prefer fixed prices to pay-by-use. Taxis are paid-by-use, but in some cities you can pay a fixed fee to be taken to the airport. Even if people are told and shown that the fixed fee costs more, many will pick it over a regular fare structure because it is fixed.

For the same reason many people pay for phone data they don't need and so on. The value comes from not needing to consider the price once it has been paid.

Some micropayment schemes always had the sense that one was potentially running up a huge bill; Tipjoy had this problem.

[allendoerfer]

This model would incentives click-baiting again.

[jacques_chester]

I disagree. I think that it would incentivise repeat visitors -- commenters on Reddit, for example, or regulars on a forum.

Blendle's model is better for pure consumption, not for interaction.

Disclaimer: I am working on what will be a competitor.

[reitanqild]

One disadvantage to this that I hven't seen anyone else mention is the Netflix problem:

Once the service becomes popular a lot of people at big publishers will come up with the "brilliant" idea of creating their own "Netflix" which will cost slightly more and only contain their content and all of a sudden you have to subscribe to two places if you want to enjoy movies/series without using popcorn time.

[jrnkntl]

Elinea* (also in the Netherlands) offers a Spotify subscription style model for readers (next to a pay-per-article model) but they seem to be more focused on magazines than newspapers. I figure this has to do with the reasoning mentioned by alexandernl.

* http://www.elinea.nl/