npub1tj54dz997wrdyqgf8sc36z3upy3ld0ujmwqyx42dtqxcwc7l68fqlx5ry2 (npub1tj5…5ry2) So there you go with what could probably be the ideal business model for a content distribution platform:
1. A bottom tier with ads and all for those who don't pay to watch
2. A middle tier where you pay $0.05 for a 10 minutes video, and you buy the right to watch that video ads-free wherever/whenever you want it
3. A top tier where you pay $20/month for all-you-can-eat ads-free
The thing is that the folks at Google have also come quite close to it already.
YouTube Music is a good experiment for an all-you-can-eat ads-free content distribution platform. The problem is that they narrowed down their scopes to music, where they already had strong competition from Spotify (and Tidal/Apple/Amazon/Deezer etc.), and eventually ended up building a Spotify copycat with no added value in an already crowded arena. Just double the subscription cost (from $10/month to $20/month), and instead of only accessing music you get the full ads-free and portable YT experience. And that's an arena where YT would even surely win - unlike music streaming platforms, there's just no other platforms out there that can compete with YT in terms of content volume.
And they also came quite close to the pay-as-you-go model with the old Google Music. You pay $1, you buy a song, you can listen it to it whenever you like, wherever you like. It also offered the possibility of downloading a purchased song in mp3 format up to 3 times, or downloading a full library backup once a week. And you could also upload your own local mp3s to your library, and listen to them from their cloud - even the Spotify desktop app had this feature initially.
I mean, some of these business models have already been tried in the past, and they were also quite popular. It's not even about coming up with a new model out of thin air, it's just a matter of mixing some of the old ideas with the new ones and give people the flexibility of consuming content the way they prefer. But I feel like over the past decade for some reason all these companies have stopped experimenting, and they've become more like the folks who have achieved moderate success with a hammer and now think that everything in the world is a nail.