Web evangelist Bill Thompson, who helped to design and launch the Guardian Web site in 1995, acknowledges the difficulty of getting music fans to pay for downloads.
“I asked a group of senior media executives the other day how many of them used Spotify. Lots of hands went up. Then I asked how many of them paid and all the hands went down,” he said. Thompson believes those who can pay will pay, as long as they are getting something faster, better or more easily.
“The paid-for business model is quite hard, though I am a fan of the TV series Battlestar Galactica and so I downloaded the US version because I didn’t want to have to wait even a short while to see it,” he said.
Relatively wealthy customers will also pay, he argues, for the reassurance of not breaking the law, as long as the process is simple enough. Apple, for example, has benefited from making buying easy. It is done in one click. For other businesses, though, “micro-payment” remains a fiddly problem, with customers paying as little as US$0.15 to view a page.
Thompson said the solution is to stop expecting Web industries to match one another just because they inhabit the same medium.
“It all depends what a company is doing. The motivation behind the business will dictate the right model. There is no point in, say, the news or entertainment industries diminishing their audience by charging. We really don’t need convergence,” he said.
He said that Murdoch’s comments betray the fact that the newspaper magnate does not understand the Web.
“He doesn’t appreciate the dynamic that comes from disseminating information for free and providing data that can be perfectly copied by anyone. This brings the price of content down so low that it is almost not worth charging,” he said.
Thompson’s view is echoed by fellow Web pundit Jeff Jarvis, who also sees charging as anathema.
“Charging for content reduces audience, which in turn reduces advertising revenue. Putting a wall around content keeps it out of the conversation and devalues brands,” he said.
This is a danger Jarvis describes as “loss of Googlejuice.”
It is worth noting, too, that opposing political ideologies are at work here, not simply commercial forces. While the libertarian impulse to “free the Web” is claimed by hippy counter-culture, it is also aligned with far-right thought. Pirate Bay, the Swedish bootlegging site at the center of a legal storm this year, receives financial support from right-wing politician Carl Lundstrom.
Thompson knows the Web is developing fast, but is not convinced that this year will prove critical.
“I don’t think we will look back at 2009 and think that was when it all changed,” he said. “We might look back, though, and see that this was the moment when several senior executives realized they needed to change.”
The mechanics of the Web are shifting too, with new search engines and linking algorithms likely to make their presence felt soon. One thing is certain though — the public’s search for “something for nothing” will go on forever.
In the words of the Roman poet Juvenal, one of the oldest pundits available on the Web: “All wish to possess knowledge, but few comparatively speaking, are willing to pay the price.”
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