I agree that “ the news media sector can still pull things off if it focuses on its core product value, invests in tech, stops treating its customers like an airline its passengers.”

But that requires a shift from the growing “subscription hell” of a plethora of all you can eat subscriptions that suck up share of wallet without providing enough value for most potential customers.

As I write in “Risk-Free” Subscriptions to The Celestial Jukebox?, “ The future of subscriptions is to make them risk-free to the consumer. For digital services, the provider risks little except the opportunity to take money in exchange for no value. That will be less and less tolerated.”

The risk free model maps prices to usage value, and so makes it practical to subscribe to any and all publishers one wants. It also harmonizes prices between publisher-direct subscriptions and aggregated subscriptions, so one can chose one or the other based on the level of service and direct relationship desired.

All you can eat makes sense only for publishers you want to eat a lot of. The sooner publishers and aggregators realize this the sooner they will find sustainable success.