Do you love it enough to pay for it?

One thing that worries people – artists – who create and produce original content is how much free there is out on the internets. Do we now have to make everything free in order to find an audience?

This is just one part of the problem facing the print media industry – they’ve spent a long time training people to expect their online content to be free, initially believing they’d make it up in ad revenues. We know what happened there.

So I was reading about Hulu’s rock-and-hard-place situation this morning (audience vs. cable networks vs. advertisers), and one of the bits highlighted in the article is a deal with Apple to bring Hulu content to the iPad.

The Kindle and the iPad – they’re all about paying for media, albeit smaller sums than publishing houses would like. People using the Kindle pay a monthly subscription price of $13.99 right now for the New York Times. Periodicals will similarly be available on the iPad.

So people are being retrained to pay for online content when they use these devices.

People pay for content all the time. Sure, you can download tons of stuff for free illegally. But people do pay for stuff they really want. That’s the difference.

If you really want to read the New York Times on your Kindle, you pony up.

The question is, which media content do people love enough to pay for?

The Met broadcasts HD simulcasts and video in movie theaters all over the world. People pay for that – more than a regular movie ticket, but less than a ticket to the Met. You can also subscribe to the Met Player online to access their video archives. The Berlin Philharmonic has an online subscription program for live streaming and access to video.

So what about what you do?

Are you thinking of online access to your work as marketing only (nothing wrong with that), or is it possible that it’s so amazing that some people would pay to see it/hear it online?