Chris We've all been there you see an article with an interesting headline, you click the link and bam, the dreaded paywall. Maybe you're like Andre and you try to find a techie way around it. Or maybe you're like me, and you just convinced yourself it wasn't that interesting of an article. In this video, Andre and I discuss why websites put content behind paywalls. And why it might not be such a bad thing after all. Andre I actually have a medium subscription for five bucks a month, I never thought I would do it. I actually looked for ways to get around their paywall. And then one day, I was like, I give up I just, I'm just gonna give you five bucks. Chris It's like you're just saying, right, like five bucks a month. Just make one less avocado toast one day, Andre. One less Starbucks latte. On your way to the office. I know. You know, Andre I hate Starbucks. Chris So I had a subscription to I had a subscription to the Atlantic for a little while for about a year. And then they, it renewed. And I was on the annual plan. It was over $100 for the year and I was just like, I don't fucking I wasn't reading it enough. You know, you're just wasn't because you're unread. And most of the stuff I was, well, most of the stuff I ended up reading on the Atlantic was really depressing. And I was like, trying to not surround myself with all that depressing shit anymore. It's like, whenever the only times that I will read stuff about Trump is when it's gonna make me laugh. Andre Every day, um, pretty much the paywall thing is. It's I don't know how I feel about it, I think. Chris Hmm. why would why is the model different on the internet than it is say in newspapers, right? Give me an example. Okay, so the news, that observer would publish a newspaper and they put it out in the stands. And in order to get a newspaper, you have to pay what 25 or 50 cents dollar depending on the day, depending on what year, but then they started publishing their stuff online, the same content that was in the newspaper. And you could read it for free a lot of times without having to pay for the newspaper. So Andre obviously, a few the subscription was like 12 bucks a month, right? Chris That's what it ended up being. Yeah. Something like that. Okay. So why what like, right? If you were okay, let's say you were a person who had a subscription to the internet, oh, you know, daily subscription or whatever, and you're paying 1220 bucks a month even? Would you not be willing to pay that $20 Just to get the online version instead? Yeah, or even like, an dollars, Andre right. I would pay like a fraction of that. Because I know that the well. years. Chris Think about whether it's not just about the infrastructure, right? It's about the, the employees too, right. And, and so, because I hear exactly what you're saying. And I think that that's part of it, right is it's like the physical newspaper. This is something I'm purchasing. I'm taking it with me, this is mine. Right? I can go start a fire with this if I want to. I can't do that with the article online unless my computer catches fire, I guess. Andre So what's your arm? Chris I don't know, like, Well, no, I'm trying to understand why it is because I'm with you that I think paywalls are a good thing. I think journalism like, I mean content, right? Like good quality content should be compensated for essentially, yeah, that doesn't mean like, hey, the Chris Andre shows putting up a paywall to read our thoughts on the Bob burgers episodes. Right. But maybe there's a day down the road where we feel like the amount of time and effort that we're putting into creating and publishing this content, and the quality of the content actually does warrant some compensation. Sure. Right. And so I just, um, I guess what I'm trying to understand is it feels like there was a major disconnect for just about everybody. When and I use the example of like newspapers to online, because I feel Andre it's fairly it's fairly accurate, because so I think part of the problem is that when the mid 80s or mid 90s, when the Internet became more accessible to people that outlets were struggling to figure out if it was real, right? Yeah. One of the first sites I remember what not remember, but one of the first sites that stuck out in my mind that left AOL to the internet was toyota.com. I have no idea why that is in ingrained in my memory you were always trying, you always felt like these companies were trying to figure out how to get people to their websites. I think they kind of knew they just didn't really believe what was gonna happen next. So I think part of that last, or that part lasted way too long. And they lost a lot of their, their equity in their brand. And people devalued because they Chris weren't giving it away for free for so long, right? And then then they tried to put the paywalls up, and then it was like, Oh, shit. You know, we've been giving this stuff away for free and everybody's online. Nobody's buying the paper anymore. So now we got to start charging you what we were charging for the paper. And people are well, I'm not getting the paper. I don't want to pay for this. I was getting it for free for so long. Why am I paying for now? Andre So let's say hypothetically, in and Oh, subscriptions, I think the last time I paid for is like 1390 a month or something like that, right? So what if it's eight bucks? Right, eight bucks. That's reasonable. And you don't give anything that's well, there's there's a technical problem. The technical problem is a lot of papers like in and out. We're getting their news from AP wire. Chris That Yep. Absolutely. So Andre unless AP wire plays along, then it doesn't matter. Chris But you also I mean, so what what? The No, no and WRAL both did for a little while. No, no paywalled their sports stuff, because that was their local reporter who were doing that coverage. And so for like the local sports coverage, you had to pay for that. But Andre it doesn't cover the the overhead in the total expenses. No, Chris of course not. Not even close, right? Even as big as college sports and local sports are in the triangle area. Andre So I think that they let something that makes Chris a lot of sense, though. Yeah, that like, they're, they're the ones who kind of fucked it up. And they're like, oh, just kinda. And then part of it is because they're like, Oh, we're running ads, right. And so we're getting paid for these ads. But ads aren't paying what they used to anymore because ads aren't as effective as they used to. Andre Yeah, it's, it's on them. I don't I don't know. And I also, I'm sorry, Chris I just say that makes a lot of sense. I hadn't, I hadn't thought about it being like kind of their fault. Andre Yeah. And it's solely their fault. They they really didn't, they thought that they were they didn't believe it was going to be a thing. And then they didn't anticipate the fact that well, we're just we can get rid of the building. Like we can just scrap the building, we can scrap the equipment we can just write off and depreciate the the overhead on the equipment, and just move on. They just didn't Chris get rid of most of our employees and start having AI Andre write articles. I think that's a bad idea. Chris It's a terrible idea, but it's definitely the direction that plenty of places are trying to go and I Andre hope they don't. I really hope they don't. So that's my thought on that paywalls are not bad. Inherently. Just have good. Like I hate the word content now, but have something unique. Chris Thanks for checking out the Chris Andre show. Remember, unlike yourself in middle school, those like and subscribe buttons aren't going to hit themselves. And be sure to leave a comment with your favorite part of the show or a topic you'd like us to cover in the future. As always, stay salty Transcribed by https://otter.ai