Free everything or paid content on the Internet? This is the dilemma that online publishers have recently faced. The final stone was thrown by the president of the German publishing house Spiegel, Fried von Bismarck, who said that until now applications and content were obtained free on the Internet but that "we must reflect on whether this is always valid." Fried von Bismarck is in favour of models such as flat rates for content consumption.
According to von Bismarck, flat-rate fees are a good thing for bc data america both the rights holders and the publishers themselves. However, there is still a long way to go before such a model becomes established, and it is the publishers themselves who must work to develop it. This type of discourse is new for Spiegel , which has so far been the standard-bearer for free content and remains one of the few German publications able to make money from its online advertising.
However, the flat-rate content model is not satisfactory for Axel Springer Verlag executives . According to the publisher's PR director Christoph Keese, despite the fact that more and more content is consumed online , the profits almost exclusively go to the content producers.
Rainer Esser, editor-in-chief of the weekly Zeit , is also sceptical about pay-per-content models, as there is hardly any content so exclusive that it is worth paying for it. He believes that a combination of refinancing options is needed: online display and search engine advertising, e-commerce, transactional revenue, pay-per-view for certain content, collaborations and subscription campaigns for print content.