BUSINESS BLOGS
BUSINESS BLOGS
category: business
11 Nov 2008

Paid Content quotes Economist publisher Paul Rossi, who suggested at the Future Of Business Media conference last month:

Just 12 percent of European web users paid for online content last year, but that’s due to rise to 19 percent by 2013, a new Jupiterresearch report says: “While free content will continue to dominate, as overall online audiences for all content categories continue to grow, so the number of European users willing to pay for content online will grow at an even greater rate.”

That sounds like salvation for formerly premium publishers who had come out from behind their pay walls just in time for an advertising recession. But what’s driving it? A seismic shift in the number of people who will begin paying for music, Jupiter says. Though freeloaders outnumbered paying listeners by 53 million to 6.9 million last year, by 2013, it’s reckoned European efforts to drive consumers to legal downloads will see payers become the majority - 63.7 million against just 55 million. That’s one factor will drive paid content income to €5 billion in 2013, from €1.4 billion last year.

I ask: will consumers really shell for content?  I think some will.  But ultimately, I see the following being more likely:

I see aggregators licensing content from content owners as being far more likely than individual users paying content. Individual users will look for free options primarily… and be drawn to free models.  I am not saying that distribution sites who aggregate content will be able to recoup the licensing fees initially, but they will create enough value to make it worth their while.  We’ve seen many companies outright license content from us at WatchMojo.com, how many users would pay for the content?  I am not sure.