[tonyblundell]

The web is 20 years old. I think if this was going to happen, it would have happened by now.

Outside of a few niches, people just aren't willing to pay to read websites.

What I could see happening is premium content being bundled by ISPs. Pay for X package from Y ISP, get content from A, B and C websites. Kind-of like how TV channels are bundled.

In all likelihood though, I think advertising will continue as is. Advertisers will just come up with cleverer ways of presenting it.

[FroshKiller]

>The web is 20 years old. I think if this was going to happen, it would have happened by now.

That's a failure of imagination right there. It took decades for cable to come along and disrupt broadcast television. You never know what's going to happen.

[pseudonym]

Honestly, I think that we're already moving that direction-- Patreon is comparatively recent, but more and more people are finding that it's actually a viable "microtransaction/subscription" model for online content. The idea of paying a subscription model for some of the things on Patreon would have seemed silly a couple years ago, but I think we're starting to hit the ads-to-content noise/ratio level where people are actually seeing what the alternative looks like.

[hellofunk]

Before the web, it was quite standard for nearly everyone to pay for their daily newspaper. People obviously have no problem paying a little for the news. Take away quality free content, and natural human interest will lead to a successful pay model, possibly.

[tonyblundell]

True, but I don't think it necessarily follows that they'd pay for the same content digitally.

One thing the web has shown us is that people still value tangible things differently to non-tangible things.

You also have to consider the reason's people paid for newspapers... it might have been the only way to get reliable content... to purport a certain image, social status or political allegiance... to keep in-line with peers - did you see this? did you read that?.. simply to pass time.

If you have a smartphone and five minutes to waste, you can cover all those bases without paying for a news article. You can use Facebook, Reddit, Youtube and discussion forums for subjects that interest you, for example.

Remember in the 90s when online store catalogues were pretty much just uploads of print catalogues - designed with pages of content and no search functionality. Or when people tried to make 'online malls' - directories of stores people might want to use in one visit, like they would a brick and mortar mall? They didn't work because the analog to digital conversion isn't just a straight upload process. It's much more complicated than that.

People interact with and consume digital content different to paper content. Just uploading and charging a few pence to read isn't going to work IMHO.

[hellofunk]

Music is somewhat intangible and widely available for free, but it appears it is also moving to a pay subscription model successfully.

[prapam2]

But newspaper carried ads as well. It is where i live.

[Xophmeister]

    What I could see happening is premium content being bundled
    by ISPs. Pay for X package from Y ISP, get content from A, B
    and C websites. Kind-of like how TV channels are bundled.

That's a different can of worms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality

[jff]

People need to stop using "net neutrality" whenever the idea of paying for something on the Internet comes up.

[mokus]

Paying _ISPs_ for content is exactly what net neutrality is about. I already pay my ISP to deliver bits. I'm not giving them a microcent more for the privilege of having all content that isn't in some "package" blocked or throttled.

[jff]

The GP didn't say anything about blocking or throttling, merely that you'd pay to have access to content you wouldn't get otherwise and that ISPs could offer subscription bundles to their customers--pay $5/month and get unlimited access to the NYT and a bunch of other paywalled news sites.

[mokus]

Ah, I see. In that case, yes - there's no connection to net neutrality as long as they don't penalize anyone in any way for buying those subscriptions directly from the sites themselves (EDIT: or other sources... if i buy a sub on my ISP it should still be valid when I visit my parents who have a different ISP, etc).

[Xophmeister]

That's a fair point: I didn't read the original suggestion to mean, "Your ISP acts as an agent to manage your paid site subscriptions" -- which, you're right, has nothing to do with net neutrality -- I just instantly jumped to the blocking/throttling conclusion.