Boy oh boy, if only Hilary and her cronies would listen, things would be so much easier for everyone. Hmmm...but statistics can be manipulated to say pretty much anything, so should we really believe these numbers? Sigh :| and the beat goes on...

By Noah Shachtman

NEW YORK -- To online publishing and entertainment firms looking to start charging for their content, there was a simple message from today's Jupiter Media Forum: Don't hold your breath.

In a flat advertising market, many Internet content companies are hoping to get consumers to pay a subscription fee for their news, music or video programming. But Jupiter Media Metrix analyst David Card quickly dashed that dream in the opening session of this conference of media and marketing executives.

Seventy percent of online adults surveyed by Jupiter, he said, can't understand why anyone would pay for any online content.

"If anything, people are less willing to pay than they were 18 months ago," he said.

When the respondents were asked what they would be willing to pay for if free content vanished, 63 percent replied "nothing." No category -- not music, not news, not games, not sports, not education -- drew more than single-digit responses from those willing to spend.

That's bad news for, among others, the big five record labels, which have spent millions to assemble digital music subscription services that have, so far, met with clammy consumer response.

The crowd of approximately 150, assembled in a hotel ballroom just south of Central Park, did hear some subscription success stories.

Sony Online's Scott McDaniel, reported that his company had 424,000 subscribers at $10 per month for its wildly addictive role-playing game, EverQuest.

Wall Street Journal Online publisher Neil Budde boasted 625,000 subscribers for his site, at an annual fee of either $59 or $29 (depending on whether they had a subscription to the Journal's print edition).

Playboy.com has 114,000 people paying a monthly fee of anywhere from $10 to $69, according to Randy Nicolau, an executive there. That's to be expected from one of the top adult media brands, because a large part of what little money is being spent on paid Internet content is blown on porn -- $273 million in a total market of $1.4 billion, according to Jupiter.

But these upbeat examples didn't appear to buoy the mood in the conference's ballroom; if anything, their successes seemed to underscore so many others' disappointments.

The six executives on the conference stage, said Jupiter analyst Aram Sinnreich, represented almost every profitable online media company there was. In the audience -- if they could afford the $1,495 registration fee -- were the also-rans. To many of them, Jupiter's prediction that the online content market would jump to $5.8 billion by 2006 sounded decidedly off-key.

In order to make money, said Martin Niseholtz, CEO of The New York Times Digital, Internet content providers would have to find a blend of paid products and free, advertiser-supported fare.

Representatives from the online advertising community said that major advertisers, such as the consumer packaged goods firms, were willing to start spending more on Internet marketing.

"We're in the midst of a full-swing turnaround," said P.J. MacGregor, a director of Starcom IP, a media placement firm.

But neither MacGregor nor his fellow panelists offered any evidence to support that rosy view.

Another ray of hope at the conference came from the example of RealNetworks, which has attracted about 500,000 people to pay $10 per month for the RealOne Super Pass service. For that fee, subscribers get access to content from ABCNews.com, CNN.com, major league baseball and other services.

Like a cable television company, RealNetworks passes a portion of those fees to its media partners. ISPs and other Internet infrastructure firms might be able follow the lead of RealNetworks, Jupiter's Card said.

The cable-like model "better work," replied ABCNews.com executive Bernard Gershon. "Otherwise, we're all screwed."

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RELEVANT LINKS

Original Article
Jupiter Media Metrix

the longer we go without a good solid subscription model, the less chances of anyone paying for an online subscription.... the recording industry obviously does not understand this....

it would be like, if the government all of a sudden started selling marijuana cigaretts t at the stores for 50 bux a pack. The 'market' is already here, we like it better our way. nothing will work now....

muahahahaha

i like those little toys in cereal boxes, but if they stopped giving them away for FREE, i wouldn't go out and buy them for 10 bucks a month

Richie, even if there was a solid subscription model, I wouldn't trust it because of its source. The stuff that's on the radio is crap, and I think the same may be true for anything coming from The Industry.

Would even an above average subscription service provide me with live performances by Jim Croce, or Serbian 80's pop, or German 70's music? I doubt it. The demand for that type of music is virtuallly nonexistant, so it wouldn't make sense for them to provide it. But if just one other person out there has what I'm looking for, it's enough. Some things just weren't meant for big business.

Even if they managed to shut down all file sharing systems, new ones and maybe more complex ones would come, so the user will never be willing to pay a cent for waht they have for free.

And, there's always ftp. It doesn't all have to be about P2P. There's plenty of people out there with servers that store music that's available to anyone, without having to log in.

yea but there is a down fall to FTPs theres always those who wants 1 gig uploaded to download say 100 megs. p2p is the way to go, and as well as IRC, how are they going to stop you from sharing files over a chat client. Who would even try to shut down IRC?

But, aslong as they keep acting like asses i'll never buy a CD unless its one I want. Like say a Rammstein release...I have all their CD's and im willing to sacrifice up to 21 dollars for their next CD.

Hmmm... I haven't found that to be the case. Usually, there's a request that you upload, but I haven't seen it as a requirement.

Plus, there's the websites that I guess aren't really ftp. You just right-click and save as, and it's completely anonymous.