NME experiments with micropayments, possibly

So we know from the ABC figures that take-up of NME's digital edition is a little slow, which appears to have spurred the magazine to try a different way to monetise its digital content:

NME is to trial charging for online access to articles for the first time, asking readers to pay a modest 69p for this week's cover story on the indie four-piece Haim.

The magazine is dipping its toe in the world of online payments with the one-off experiment, but insiders insisted there are no plans to erect a full paywall around NME.com.

From Wednesday, it will cost NME readers 69p to read an "enhanced digital" version of the cover feature on Haim – 30p cheaper than one of the San Fransisco band's singles on iTunes. The rest of the website will remain free.

This makes a degree of sense - keeping the feature articles off the site to protect magazine sales has been understandable, although hasn't worked, so a different approach makes sense.

And the magazine still has some great writers and access to interesting people, so trying to leverage some money online off the back of that makes sense.

On the other hand - sixty nine pence for a single article? MediaGuardian might describe it as "modest" but it looks more like the sort of price only a fan would pay. If you could take or leave Haim, or were merely Haimcurious, you'd head off to discover their other, free interviews, surely?

And if the idea is that people who like Haim very much will happily fork over 69p to read their words, there's a bit of a threat there to the NME that I'm not sure it's thought through. Because if I managed Haim, and knew the NME was going to be making money from selling unique digital content that Haim have helped create, I might consider that my group should get a share of the profits.

It's not like the magazine, where Haim are getting exposure to the wider NME audience, and can think of it as a marketing jaunt. This is a sale which takes place, inarguably, because of the presence of Haim in the product.

It might just be a dead question though - as there's nowhere obvious on the NME website where you can buy the thing. There's no mention on the homepage; no mention on the digital download page; not a word on the Haim page or on the 'inside the NME this week' page.

Perhaps the experiment has already been abandoned; because if it's still going on, I think we can predict there's only going to be limited take-up.

Gordon in the morning: Young man uses technology to keep in touch with girlfriend

Behind Gordon Smart's unreakabale paywall today, there's the story that Zayn Malik is using Skype to talk to his girlfriend. Coming tomorrow: Harry Styles uses water to feel less thirsty.

Gordon in the morning: Robbie Williams shock

This morning, those paying for The Sun's website will be nodding at each other, and agreeing they were acute to make such an investment. For they can read this story:

Robbie Williams in unironed shirt

...while those on the outside can only wondered about the details.

Every penny spent on The Sun+ is a penny wisely spent, clearly.

Gordon in the morning: Cover story

What do you get for your money if you pay to read Gordon's column on the Sun website today?

He'll tell you about Victoria Beckham's photo on the cover of Australian Vogue.

But you can see that for free on the Australian Vogue website.

The choice is yours.

Gordon in the morning: Glastonbury on the beach

Over in the private area behind the Sun's magnificent paywall, Gordon hears that Mick Jagger is planning his own festival.

Because nothing has a happier historical precedent than a festival that the Rolling Stones have been involved in the organisation of, right?

Gordon quotes a "source"; maybe someone who has been paid in vouchers to access the Sun website now it's not really on the internet any more:

"Mick has put out some feelers in Brazil to put on a big show. The plans are ambitious but if he pulls it off it will be huge. The whole vibe of the event is very much 'flower power' and the same hippy values that Glastonbury prides itself on. The publicity drive will begin in the next six months or so but there's no doubt there will be big names on the bill"

Yes, of course it's in Brazil, where the sun is warm on old bones and the tax arrangements agreeably outside HMRC's grasp.

I suppose it's not inconsistent that someone who thinks they spy "hippy values" in between the phone-charging points and ATMs of Worthy Farm could believe that a Rock Business Festival which flies people halfway round the world to have a party against a backdrop of protests against grand entertainments taking precedence over local problems is in someway a "flower power" event.

That vague "six months" to the publicity drive feels like the sort of time period which is just long enough to let most people forget it was ever mentioned, should it not happen. We shall see.

Gordon in the morning: Everything has a price

As you'll be aware, in order to read Gordon Smart's high-quality journalism online these days you have to pay.

What does your money get you?

Today, it's a story about how Fleetwood Mac's Don't Stop is going to be used in a John Lewis advert.

Who wouldn't think it great value to dip into their pocket to discover exciting news about a television commercial, eh?

Gordon in the morning: One of JLS makes a playlist

Behind The Sun's paywall this morning, your cold hard cash will buy a chance to read a story about Marvin out of JLS plotting a dance album. This, it appears, is cause for Calvin Harris to "watch out". Presumably in case Humes borrows his headphones but doesn't return them.

MySpace hope you'll pay

TechCrunch is reporting MySpace plans for charging visitors to listen to music. Understandable to a point - at the moment, the company is burning through USD20million a month on royalties for streaming music, which is ridiculous from a business point of view.

The trouble is, the big streaming bill is because they're paying too much to the labels. Admittedly, raising a paywall will help by sending most of MySpace's traffic away. But wouldn't it just be quicker to close MySpace down altogether rather than make it dwindle away to nothingness?

MySpace: Friends Reunited is waiting.

Gordon in the morning: Robbie Williams is missing

Something must be terribly wrong in Wapping - there's no lightweight half-story on the Bizarre pages this morning about either Robbie Williams or JLS. How can this be?

Elsewhere, Gordon has a bunch of gossip from the GQ Awards the night before last, which is fascinating. No, not the lame "look, here's a picture of Gary Barlow talking to Pixie Lott" backstage mutter itself, but the question it throws up for Rupert Murdoch's digital strategy. It's taken over 24 hours for this stuff to appear on the Sun website because it was being held back to coincide with the print edition.

But what would have happened if people were being expected to pay for Smart's gubbins? Let's just assume there's a market for now. If you're shoveling over quids for hot gossipings, would you feel the deal was sweet if you have to wait for over a day before seeing a photo of The Bloke Out Of Take That and That Woman Who Looked Uncomfortable On The Front Of FHM Last Month? Simply so that it doesn't "spoil" the story for the paper edition?

But if Gordon had rushed back to the office after the GQ Awards and stuck the stuff up before he went off to bed, how would the people who buy the paper on Thursday morning feel at discovering they're now handing cash to effectively buy a print out of the website from Tuesday evening?

It's not like Smart has enough content to be able to offer something exclusive to both outlets. So which paying customer gets the stale content, Rupert?

Gordon in the morning: Enjoy him while he's free

Announcing his plans to charge people for The Sun, Murdoch conceded that he'd have to use heavyweight legal frighteners to stop 'his' stories appearing elsewhere. Has he even read his own papers in the last couple of years?

Sure, Gordon and his team are great at securing stories nobody else has - interviews with Kasabian, set-up stories with minor celebs (which will stop happening when the audience isn't there any more and Uncle Rupert threatens to sue anybody who repeats word of the publicity stunt). But much of Gordon's content relies on recycling other people's exclusives.

Sometimes the recycling is explicit, in the case of this morning's topless Sharon Stone photos, bought-in from Paris Match (Gordon now apparently completely over that outrage that celebrities might remove their clothes for attention, then).

More often, it's not - like the other day when Smart lifted a chunk of City Life's interview with Ian Brown without mentioning its source. This more humdrum role of Bizarre - an aggregator of other people's news - led to this in this week's Holy Moly mailout:

Bit off-topic, but quite pertinent.

Rupert Murdoch has announced that he is going to start charging for his stable's online news services (Sun, News of the World, Times etc) and has accepted that there "could be a need for furious litigation to prevent stories and photographs being copied elsewhere". This will undoubtedly be a success, and will see others follow suit (the Daily Mail would salivate at the thought of being able to charge for its annoyingly good showbiz section).

This is all well and good (I make no bones about the fact that I usually take Gordon Smart's lead on the biggest story of the day and run it on HM), but let's hope the respect of copyright and content ownership is reciprocal. Will these papers return the favour and put an end to ripping stories from UK and US celebrity blogs and running them as their own without the merest hint of a link or credit back to the originators?

It works both ways, Rupert - and you have the deepest pockets in the world. x

It does raise a fascinating question - if Gordon's bulging archive goes behind a turnstile, will The Sun have to spend a fortune weeding out the - ahem - borrowed material?

Still, kudos to Rupert - he really did manage to distract everyone's attention from that pesky £2billion loss, didn't he?

Gordon in the morning: A fair swap for a Ginster's pasty

Wow. Whatever will we do when we have to scrape together the cash to pay for Gordon Smart and his good works?

After all, I'm sure most of the world would rather starve than miss out on the story that Fearne Cotton is no longer dating Jesse Jenkins.

Just imagine, Rupert - if you could get a pound from everyone who cares about that, you'd possibly have had enough to pay someone to have at least airbrushed out the bit about Shakira that must have been on the cover of wherever this picture came from:

You really can see why Rupert thinks Bizarre is just like the Wall Street Journal, can't you?

Murdoch can't count on the Jackson family bailing him out, either: Jackson's kids are being banned from the internet. This is somehow going to protect them from finding out the grisly details of their father's death. I understand the RIAA is now looking to introduce legislation to save us all from the horror of finding out these details by putting a massive block on all the internet. "It's better we don't know."

Last FM summons whine: Switches off services

For a moment, our gaze is directed away from PRS attacks on Google to the trouble over at Last FM this morning, as the service owners take steps to make it less useful to as many people as possible.

In what we're taking as the largest marketing campaign yet embarked upon on behalf of Spotify, Last FM has thrown up a pay wall around most of its music streams. If you're in Germany, the US or the UK, you can still stream music for free; elsewhere - I haven't had a chance to consult a Gazetteer, but I believe that's 'elsewhere' as in 'nearly all the world' - you'll have to hand over EUR3 a month to hear Last FM radio.

Sorry, I'll read that again: outside those three countries, you'll go elsewhere for your music.

The reason for the paywall is to try and summon some money to pay royalties and return some cash to owners CBS. It's almost as if everyone involved has this far been working on a mistaken assumption of what the financial value of recorded music is online, and is trying to shape their service to match that, rather than finding out where the value point is and building around that. Why does that sound familiar?

But it's not just by closing out the French, the Candians, the French Canadians, the good people of the Gabon and the Leeward Islanders by which Last FM is attempting to scupper itself. Oh, no. Last FM isn't merely getting in the bath with an electric toaster, it's going to take two catering size jars of paracetamol, washed down with a bottle of whisky:

Last.fm has said that all non-official mobile clients will be banned. This isn't going over well.

The change comes with a new developer API that will actually make things much easier for other developers, who've had to rely on a few undocumented calls up until now. Current licensing agreements with labels—who Last.fm is in no position to alienate—prohibit mobile streaming, though the company's official mobile radio apps—right now just on the iPhone and Android—will still work fine.

Oh, yes. People love the stuff we do so much they build services to help us reach new audiences and move across platforms. Let's stop that happening, then.

Now, of course, there would be objections from the labels - who have never seen a digital development they didn't want blocked by an act of Congress - but surely Last FM could try and win them round? And, if they're really so keen to have 'official' apps for mobile, why not talk to the unofficial guys and see if they can't be brought in-house, or at least given a blessing?

Instead, plugs are pulled. Services are yanked. And a happy web community are happy no more:

That really sucks
I renewed my subscription (I have been a subscriber for a few years) but now regret it as I will no longer be able to listen to the radios in my usual music player, so I paid for nothing.
[...]
How sad and dissappointing
You are throwing to the waste bin thousand of free development hours (including many of my own) that directly benefited Last.fm.

I'm sorry that it has come to this. Don't forget that the main value of Last.fm has been created by its users scrobbling songs, writing the wiki, uploading music, writing software...
[...]
Let me tell you something
The Future of Last.fm is... well, you just have no future. You should be ashamed of this move. You are what you are because of the community (artists, listeners, developers...) and these things are against the community. It's kind of suicidal. You're dead.
R.I.P. Last FM

P.S.
Russ said: Scrobbling will always be free.
Well, it would be surrealistic to charge us for giving you our data... that's what feeds last.fm

Still, I'm sure that Last FM's current userbase will sit tight, and wait until they're allowed to listen to music on their "mobile devices". I'm sure. The internet user base is known for its patience.

Incidentally, tucked in the debate is how, precisely, Last FM defines a mobile device. This is Last FM staffer Russ's response to a question about that:

Re: Re: The Future of Last.fm Radio APIs

achitnis said:
What defines a "mobile phone" in this case? What about, say, a Nokia N810, which is an Internet tablet/MID, NOT A PHONE. Would this be barred from using the API in an application such as Vagalume to stream music? What about dedicated internet radios? These are all "portable" devices that are not phones, but are certainly mobile.

The N810 doesn't connect to a cellular data network, so it's not a phone.

So, that's the important distinction, is it? So... an iPod Touch connects via WiFI - presumably the apps are fine there, then; while the same app running on the same operating system on an iPhone suddenly becomes invalid because there's an extra antennae in the back of the device? When was this phone/not phone distinction made, precisely? 1803? If you unplug your laptop from an ethernet connection and stick in a 3 dongle, should you stop using Last FM as you're now connecting via a cellular network?

It would be funny if the internet wasn't going to lose a valuable, lovely resource as a result of it all.