Padding revenues
The media industry has been at a crossroads for some time, but the global recession served to hasten the need to address how money is to be made from all kinds of media in the Internet age.
All types of media - written, audio, video, interactive - are now available for free thanks to the Internet. The struggles of the music industry to do something about illegal file-sharing are well documented, but ultimately it will be through subscription and ad-funded models like Spotify that it's likely to survive.
Online journalism has relied on the ad-funded model from day one. We're only able to bring you all the great content on HEXUS for free thanks to advertisers. But the Internet also provides many ways for potential advertisers to access their market directly, so ad revenue is getting harder to come by.
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has been the most outspoken publisher on this matter. He has accused Google of stealing his content and even contemplated making it exclusively available on Bing.
He already makes much of the content on wsj.com available only to subscribers and, starting this June, new standalone websites for The Times and The Sunday Times will charge £1 per day or £2 per week for access to both. You can register for the new sites here.
