Content costs and pricing models in the Internet age

Abstract

The impact made by the Internet on the previously relatively stable and easily-understood pricing structure of the online information business and its effect on content costs for content owners, intermediaries and users over the past five years is noted. The continued consolidation of the information industry, with large services buying up small ones, has caused considerable unease on the part of users. The business model involved in the pricing of online use has been seen to change over the period, making it difficult to determine the forces shaping the present industry and its development over the next five years. The complexity of the traditional model has been due to vendors confronting the requirement to address the needs of widely differing types of content user in the context of the necessary arbitrage between content owner sensibilities and user demands. The different sources for the confusion that exists between models based on per-page payments and subscriptions are analyzed in order to arrive at a method for approaching online costs and prices in an ordered, structured manner.