Paid content

Key takeaways

Paid content belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Paid content to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Paid content from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Paid content is content on the Internet – such as text, graphics, video and downloads – which is paid for. Paid content is usually copyrighted. Some internet content has always historically been paid for — until recently there has been little discussion about paying for scientific, technical and medical (STM) content as well as certain trade information.

Applications

News media Printed newspaper circulation has fallen steadily since the advent of the internet – in 2008 in the USA alone newspapers lost $64.5 billion in market value. As newspapers' online readership has increased, the newspaper industry has been forced to re-evaluate their business models in the light of falling advertising revenues. While online editions of newspapers have been extremely popular, advertising rates online are lower than for print media, and revenues from them have not been sufficient to offset the loss of revenue from print. In 2009, Rupert Murdoch proposed a method of micropayments for online newspaper content. From June 2010, certain News International titles were only available as paid content.

Music The music industry has had some success in creating new markets of legal downloading where lower costs and accessibility have led to success, and some suggest there are parallels between the major victims of digitalisation – the music industry and the media. The MP3 file can often be duplicated, passed on and exchanged – without capacity boundaries or losses suffered by an individual. These features of MP3 files as an example of digital content are one of the main reasons for the huge revenue collapses in the music and media industry since the existence of the Internet. Online games, however, as an example of digital services, is only a right to participate when the purchased input is offered and traded. This right can be traded and passed on, but, contrary to MP3 files, the vendor forfeits the benefit of this right at the moment it is passed on.

Video games Since the popularization of digital distribution platforms, it has become particularly common for games to feature paid content. Said content is often unlockable via online microtransactions. The act of payment may provide access to a previously restricted feature or content in the game, or permission to download additional content.

Content on mobile services In comparison to content on the traditional internet, content for mobile services has never been free.

Payment models There is some evidence of opportunity for revenue already – custom publishing is one area proven to be thriving in the online media world. Another is the common payment system implemented in Slovakia and Slovenia by Piano Media. In this model publishers agree to go behind a paywall simultaneously and then start to charge the customer for access to all newspapers and all articles. While not all content is paid, exclusive content is and the model enables publishers who are unable to erect a pay-wall by themselves to start earning revenue outside of advertising from the internet. The increased accessibility and interactivity of online journalism has also created new opportunity in the guise of crowdsourcing, enabling people to get investigative journalists working on stories that they themselves have suggested and funded. Some success in new models for paid content is being found in the use of paywalls, especially "soft" paywalls, which blend into freemium models. Newspapers, in particular, have been implementing paywalls in an attempt to increase revenue, which has been diminishing due to a decline in print subscriptions and advertising revenue. The approaches to paywall implementation range. For example, The New York Times experimented with a metered paywall, on which they spent a reported $40 million to code and took 14 months to implement. Other publications have turned to providers to implement a solution for them, such as Weekly World News, which announced in January 2013 that they would be utilizing a pay model. Use of pay what you want has also proven successful, at least for special promotions. Pay After Reading (PAR) is a new business model and the principle for paid Internet content. This principle was applied for the first time by Slydoo on their Travel guides generator and means that the end users has access to information available in the database, not public, not free of charge, however, payment for the information occurs only after downloading / reading this information. The main reason for this approach is to overcome the natural block that has any user who should pay for the information / content without the detail knowledge of this information upfront. The author (Radomir Adamek) of this principle assumed that this model will become usual for most applications working with paid content.

See also Paywall Freemium Pay what you want

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Paid content

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Paid content claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Paid content before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Paid content ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Paid content

In research: Paid content appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Paid content in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Paid content is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Business models, Copyright law, Intellectual property law, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Paid content outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Paid content in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Paid content means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Paid content out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Paid content in simple terms?

Paid content is content on the Internet – such as text, graphics, video and downloads – which is paid for. Paid content is usually copyrighted.

Why does Paid content matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Paid content?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Paid content.