If I could pay 50 cents for an interesting-looking article AND be guaranteed they would not use my email/CC to spam me or add extra charges in the future - I would jump on it.
I'm interested in hearing how this has been explored in the past. People have mentioned Blendle, but it seems to be in Beta hell. The business model strikes me as the issue. I'm curious if one could find success by allowing ads, and cutting the aggregator's cut from 30%...
Media companies themselves prefer traditional subscriptions, so this really didn't work out. I don't exactly understand the business behind it since I am a developer, just that I know about this from people I work with. (EDIT: But I see about Blendle now - I really hope it works for them.)
Pretty sure it has something to do with "recurrent revenue". Having 100 subscriptions means you have a guaranteed that the in the next month you will get 100 * cost in. On the other hand being a pay perview model leaves you to the risk of having high fluctuation of costs. Payperview I see it favored for content providers who provide high cost content once in a while. On the other hand, making a subscription based model works better for content that you put out fast and at a relativelly low cost IMO
