Media models are changing

AAP reports:

The heartening response to a crisis in journalism has been demonstrated by Press Patron, a homegrown crowdfunding service.

In January, subscribers to the platform collectively distributed $2500 a day to their choice of emerging and non-traditional media outlets.

Over the past four weeks, contributions have jumped ten-fold to $25,000 a day.

“It’s been huge,” Alex Clark, Press Patron’s founder told AAP.

“In the past six months we’ve doubled our all-time revenue and we’re on track to double again in the next three months.

“Media have been honest about their advertising crash … and readers have responded by saying ‘we value you, and we’re going to fund you’.”

Press Patron’s growth could see more than $10,000,000 distributed to Kiwi media outlets this year, and has lured establishment players into the next-gen scheme.

New Zealand’s oldest daily newspaper, the Otago Daily Times of Dunedin, has joined up in the hope of adding a new revenue source. Others are expected to follow.

This is excellent to see and it shows the media model is changing. Yes it is challenging times for media, but we constantly see new models emerging.

Newsroom and The Spinoff have both shown you can start a new media business and grow and thrive. They have a totally different funding model to previous media.

The Government not jump in and start funding private media companies. That makes them dependent on the Government of the day, and would be awful for democracy.

For those saying the end is nigh and the media can’t survive in this Internet age, well they said that about the music industry. And music industry revenues did drop from from 2001 to 2014, but then it started to grow again as digital models thrives (especially Apple Music) and has grown from US14.3 billion to US$19.1 billion.

Same with movies. Once it was all about pirates will drive us bankrupt. Today box office revenues are US $43 billion, with constant annual growth.

And look at what Netflix and other services have done to television.

Yes it is tough and challenging times for media. But people will pay for quality content, as the story above shows.