I might be wrong but I don't think those are services that can be characterised as micropayment like e.g. Flattr is (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropayment for more).
Right, those are macropayments -- pay once, and you have access to all content covered by the service for the month. That's bundling, and it reduces the friction/cognitive load required to decide if each microtransaction is worth it -- every song/movie/etc. is "free" after the initial payment, so you don't spend time worrying about whether or not this particular song is worth 0.05 cents or whatever, you decide that Spotify as a whole is worth the subscription fee and then you consume as much music as you want without further worry.
(The OTHER common thread to all those examples is that none of those actually make enough money to pay for the absolute cost of the content they offer -- with the exception of some Netflix originals and Spotify-exclusive tracks and what have you, the vast majority of the content on those subscription services is licensed to those platforms at some MARGINAL cost, and the cost of actually making that content has already been paid for by theatrical showings, TV rights fees, album sales, etc. They're not really sustainable models as they exist right now once theaters, TV channels and album sales start to die out, which is where the sort of content that is being talked about here already is at -- content that needs to cover the ABSOLUTE cost of creation through online revenues.)
cwyers|10 years ago
(The OTHER common thread to all those examples is that none of those actually make enough money to pay for the absolute cost of the content they offer -- with the exception of some Netflix originals and Spotify-exclusive tracks and what have you, the vast majority of the content on those subscription services is licensed to those platforms at some MARGINAL cost, and the cost of actually making that content has already been paid for by theatrical showings, TV rights fees, album sales, etc. They're not really sustainable models as they exist right now once theaters, TV channels and album sales start to die out, which is where the sort of content that is being talked about here already is at -- content that needs to cover the ABSOLUTE cost of creation through online revenues.)