Online Subscribers Are We?

So the Long Island Business News (LIBN.com) has gone to an online subscriber model. Online subscription models are being tested on us, the public; we who are currently used to unlimited free information on the internet. Recently, Rupert Murdoch put forth that he was moving to a subscriber model for all of his online publications.

Many online publications are simply the digital version of a print publication so many of us have been able to enjoy many publications online without being subscribers. Most people believe that we will not be willing to agree to pay models for information on the net because it was founded on the notion of (free) access to information. However, there is the necessary revenue side of internet content vs. the status quo of free content especially as traditional ad revenue falls.

I'll be the first one to say that I don't like having to pay for anything and as long as I'm paying over $50 a month to access high-speed internet, through Cablevision I might add, I feel I am paying enough already though this doesn't help the content providers at all. But, TV used to be free, radio used to be free and so on. In reality, we are now paying for a lot of things that were free when I was growing up. So, subscriber models may actually work in some cases. I am watching. We'll see how LIBN fares in the paid content wars.