iTunes downloads payment Model – Can it save publishing?

iTunes downloads payment model is huge business opportunity for publishers and for enterprising software developers looking to attach combine an Instapaper-like app with an itunes downloads -like payment model. This is particularly easy to imagine in the specific case of Apple and the iPhone. Naturally publishers would have to restrict free access to their content in some way, but assuming they do, wouldn’t readers be willing to pay a fee for the great user experience I now enjoy, in the same way they’ve shelled out billions for songs on iTunes thanks to the full service convenience of Apple’s service?

Not according to Clay Shirky they won’t. In a post entitled “Why Small Payments Won’t Save Publishers“, he argues that publishers will not be able to save themselves by charging for their content. (And he helpfully links to a number of articles in the mainstream press that outline ideas very similar to my own, if only to debunk them.) Clay’s post did not convince me that the charging for textual content is a non-starter, however. Quite the contrary, the piece struck me as ideal fodder for a merciless fisking.

As background for his argument, Clay first contends that the term “micropayment” is misplaced in describing a putative paid content system, citing an upper limit for payments that are truly micro that I suppose he extracted from somewhere in the nether regions of his anatomy. Well, who cares? Whether we choose to call them micropayments or floozlebeezies has no material impact on the potential merits of such a system.

His second piece of background is that small payments won’t fly because users don’t want them:

The other key piece of background isn’t about small payments themselves, but about the conversation. Such systems solve no problem the user has, and offer no service we want. As a result, conversations about small payments take place entirely among content providers, never involving us, the people who will ostensibly be funding these transactions.

The implication is that paid content can only succeed if it is actively sought by us, the “users”. Perhaps I’m missing something, but in this context I don’t see any difference between paying for content and paying for anything else. Carmakers charge for cars because they need revenues to pay for capital, labor and to provide value to their shareholders. Car buyers aren’t clamoring to pay for vehicles, in fact I’m quite sure that few indeed would say no to a free SUV or Prius. Publishers have costs and shareholders as well, and it is quite natural that they would like to charge for their wares whether their customers want to pay for them or not.  Just Browsing

itunes downloads payment model

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