Cheap and free information

Increased access to cheap – and often free – information has already had an impact on business and society.

Social media such as Twitter played an influential role in the “Arab Spring”, helping topple governments in the Middle East and Africa. WikiLeaks sparked global controversy by publishing sensitive government and commercial information.

The free, and mostly illegal, sharing of films and music on the web has inflicted significant damage on content owners. Google and Yahoo and other content aggregators with user-friendly search capabilities have increased the availability of free information online. This has led many consumers to cut down on reading newspapers and magazines.

Meanwhile governments are putting pressure on science journals to make academic papers – often funded by taxpayers – publicly available for free. This risks hurting the academic publishing sector led by Reed Elsevier.

In reaction, companies are experimenting with new business models.

Following wider adoption of legiti-mate digital outlets such as Apple’s iTunes and streaming services such as Spotify and Deezer, the global music industry returned to growth last year for the first time since 1999.

A growing number of newspapers now operate a paywall as they seek new ways to monetise their content. Some allow access to a certain number of articles before payment is required. Google is unveiling a subscription service for some of its YouTube specialist video channels to add a second revenue stream beyond online advertising.

IDC, a market intelligence firm, predicts people accessing the internet via a personal computer in the US will shrink to 225m in 2016 from 240m last year – while numbers accessing the internet via tablet and smartphone will grow from 174m to 265m. If content owners can find compelling, imaginative and simple ways of charging for this content, they could attract a new breed of paying users.

Rob Budden