The Financial Times reports this morning that the Wall Street Journal website will begin accepting micro-payments for individual articles this year. This immediately made me think that Rupert Murdoch (owner of the WSJ and owner or director of several other media outlets, has visions of diving headfirst into a vault of micro-payments and swimming around in them.
I’m actually a big fan of the Journal and it’s the only paper I’d have home delivered if I didn’t travel so much, but micro-payments for articles will never work. I’m willing to drop 99 cents on a song I want to listen to over and over or $4.99 for an app or game I use again and again, but I’m not going to purchase an article that I will most likely read once- and I don’t think others will either.
Maybe Murdoch’s goal isn’t even to get rich from the micro-payment business model, but just save his rather big slice of the news’ industry. Either way, it’s a bad idea and hopefully someone is still at the drawing board working on something else.