Pricing models? Where we’re going, we don’t need pricing models.

Chris Anderson’s book “Free” has scared quite a few journalists and for good reason.  He sees a digital future where any kind of pricing model is irrelevant.  I haven’t read “Free” and therefore am basing most of my observations on Anderson’s detractors, namely Malcolm Gladwell.

One of the more interesting points Anderson makes in “Free” is how much more space there is for content in the digital world.  You can put anything on YouTube, there are no editorial or space restrictions.  So, we’ve got enough bandwidth to stick everything on YouTube – but is this necessarily a good thing?  It limits the amount of accessible content because what is of value is stuffed under a million other things that aren’t worth your time.  Anderson addresses this by advocating for content creators to evolve into content managers or “community managers.”  This works, but still doesn’t mean that the final product is free, as Gladwell points out in a metaphor:

Generating and distributing electricity, however, requires a vast and expensive infrastructure of transmission lines and power plants—and it is this infrastructure that accounts for most of the cost of electricity. Fuel prices are only a small part of that.

In this case, the community manager would be the one generating and distributing.  YouTube (the fuel), can still be free – but the end product isn’t truly free – you’ve still got to employ the manager.

There is one criticism Gladwell makes about “Free” that I think is a little thin:

The Times gives away its content on its Web site. But the Wall Street Journal has found that more than a million subscribers are quite happy to pay for the privilege of reading online.

The Wall Street Journal can charge for its content because it has a niche market.  The New York Times is broader; it’s competing against a different audience.  The Wall Street Journal can focus on business as its expertise.  The NYT has to focus on everything: features, sports, breaking news, etc.

And, Mark Cuban writes:

Whether its on a central website, a co produced website, in print or on a hologram in the evening sky, I should go to the NY Times because they have demonstrated to me that they have the very best articles on the subjects I am looking for. That they are the best source for breaking news about the topics I care about. THEY NEED TO MAKE SURE I DONT HAVE THE CHOICE OF GETTING IT ANYWHERE ELSE BUT WHERE THEY DICTATE.

This is exactly what the WSJ is doing.  They a) have developed an audience that believes they are the authority on the subjects they cover and b) can both charge for content and (to some degree) keep that content only accessible via subscription.*

I think the future of web-based storytelling will rely on some kind of hybrid of the two issues I looked at above.  I think Anderson is completely right that editors will evolve into content managers, and I also think Cuban is completely right when he yells (electronically) that storytellers must have some way to manage how people see their work.  Is all of this going to involve a new pricing model, or no pricing at all?  That remains to be seen.  I’ll have to take Gladwell’s side in all of this when he concludes: “The only iron law here is… that the digital age has so transformed the ways in which things are made and sold that there are no iron laws.”

*Yes it is possible to pirate bits and pieces of content from the WSJ’s website by cutting and pasting, but their subscription lock certainly makes the whole of their content that much more inaccessible.

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