My Internet: Balancing Free and Pay

I’ve been thinking about the relationship between media consumers and producers recently. There is a clear gap between these two view points. Unfortunately, the current relationship isn’t working. Consumers don’t like paying for content, navigating past advertisements, and balancing true opinion with purchased placement. Conversely, producers are sick and tired of having their content ripped, torrented, and abused.

Let’s start with an example: eBooks. Everyone has seen an eBook in one form or another. On the Kindle or iPad, eBooks have brought reading back into the media spotlight. Touting a kindle on the beach is much more socially acceptable than reading a hardcover monstrosity on the same sand. However, there is no library for eBooks. You pay, you read, and you repeat. The current consumption model is very monotonous and can be costly for an avid user.

On one hand, the authors and editors need a cut. How can one survive without being payed for their work? On the other hand, as a consumer in a digital world, paying for a few hundred pages is hard to stomach with the wealth of information on the web. Obviously published novels are deeper and more useful than the average blog post or RSS headline but that mindset of free prevails.

Music and Television are also great examples of this mindset. I’m sure you know a handful of people who stuff their MP3 players with illegally downloaded albums and episodes. From Hip-Hop to Rock, Comedy to Drama, media is always being consumed. But how can one afford to listen to new music and watch new shows on their current budget? It was only a few years ago that setting up an antenna brought all the entertainment one yearned for and a radio provided all the tracks one desired. On a salary very similar to those times, $1 per track and $2 per episode feels outrageous.

Again, the artists and producers deserve a piece of the pie but when Youtube and download aggregators offer free entertainment, it’s hard to pull the trigger and help the “rich get richer”. DRM and an increasingly aggressive law team try to combat these issues but there is no end in sight. I mean, when the number of illegal downloads a piece of media gets is used to illustrate its popularity, the culture is hard to overcome.

Digital has made our lives much more convenient. However, its ease of use has made it mentally harder to pay for media. Youtube and Social Networks offer free entertainment that users can enjoy while keeping their hard earned dollars. Which brings us back to balancing prouder payment and the consumer lust for free. The moral’s of the end user are declining while content creators continue to push ads and cost onto the already weakening market. But how can the demand for consumption and payment equalize?

Imagine a world without ads and hidden costs from website to website. Imagine listening to all the music you want, wherever you are, for no additional charge. Imagine an ecosystem where both producers and consumers are happy. Welcome to my internet. The idea is simple, your ISP is the gateway to media.

Included with your service is access to a huge library of content. Prices are no longer tiered for speed but media consumption. Now don’t confuse this with a pay per bit model because that too breaks the consumers proclivity towards free. Heavy users, like today, pay the most for their connection while users who only watch a few movies and TV shows pay less per month while strict email checkers pay even less than that. Similar to pay per bit, except heavy users aren’t killed with cost because the top plan is unlimited.

Basically, the mindset of today remains the same. Big consumers pay the most while those currently with dial-up pay only a fraction for their limited use. Simply put, your ISP pays the content producers based on your usage and your monthly bill now correlates to consumption.

For instance, let’s imagine the stereotypical teenager. She likes reading Twilight books, listening to the newest Rap singles, and watching medical dramas. (We all know this person) My internet gives them access to all the media they want while her ISP pays a fraction to Little, Brown and Company books, Jay-Z, and Fox media. Out of, let’s say, a $100/month plan each content creating entity gets a piece of the pie. On the downside, each piece of media is valued at a much lower cost than before. However, the issue of stealing content will be greatly reduced. Viewers will no longer have the urge to steal the media they want. Content producers, on the other hand, will bring in even more profit than before because fewer people are stealing the content. More media for consumers and more money for producers, a match made in heaven don’t you think?

Now clearly this is more of a dream than a plan for immediate role-out, but it offers a lot of insight into consumption reform. Users aren’t financially burdened or tempted to turn to the dark side to consume media while producers benefit from fewer thefts. This is my ideal internet, what’s yours?