duckrabbit are biting the bullet.
Written by David WhiteDue to the obvious lack of money pouring into our coffers (compared to the billions that we want) we have decided to erect a paywall.
We have enlisted the help of a bloke called Roger, and he will be building The Wall for us, cardboard brick by cardboard brick. Once built, he will smash it all down. It will take him a while, and he will be crying, shouting and singing whilst doing so. Mostly crying though. The wall is in no way meant to alienate you, dear audience, from the ‘talent’. It’s just that you’ll have to pay to read us from now on. This seems sensible. We need to apply an old model to the tintertwizzle. (that’s Welsh for internet, keep up at the back).
This experiment is quite likely to result in an approximate 90% fall in readership. We don’t mind, we only want the minted and the stupid, and that’s what we’ll be left with.
Interestingly Roger has just called up and suggested we give our paying readers a free copy of his single “Is there anybody out there”. I argued against that idea, but Roger is an argumentative sod. In the end we compromised, and have agreed to give away free copies of “Wish you were here” instead.
Money, it’s a gas.
Discussion (10 Comments)
As someone who aspires to make a living from shooting pictures, I truly hope that the pay wall method can offer some respite from the current model of the internet, i.e. give everything you have away for free if it is creative is some way. Such steps may not be the be-all-end-all of making a living, but it’s a start to forming something we can all work with.
Good for you guys. Good for photography. Good for journalism.
If only … do people really believe that paywall sites are going to start investing more in photography?
meh.
I haven’t paid for Times access – has anyone else?
It’s a nice thought but I don’t think it’s going to work, and i sure don’t think us lot would be seeing the profits if it did. It’s a race to the bottom in terms of photography/lineage rates
As a duckrabbit blogger I hereby resign as I want people to actually read the nonsense I write.
I’m heading off to the Guardian…….
Excellent news!
Please advise on where to enter my credit card details.
They aren’t going to invest more money simply in photography, but they will if payment gets you high quality journalism with integrity. I hope we see a change involving a shift away from the old ideas of selling licences per image, etc., to something that can fully utilise the Internet.
A boy can dream. Necessity is the mother of all invention.
fuck all gets you some very high quality photography with integrity, so why start paying now?
All this discussion leaves me comfortably numb…
How much money are we talking?
Billions probably. What for?