Memo to News Corp: Mediocrity is Free

There is something very un-News Corp about this global steering committee to oversee, or to at least recommend, next steps towards the commercialisation of content. Where once the Sun King provided the autocratic guidance, now a coterie of editorial managers across the globe are collaborating in a workshop initiative. The company’s about-face on the preferred commercial model almost certainly started with the acquisition of the WSJ. The publication’s insistence on a pay-per-view model, and its general success as a proof-point, provided the content leviathan with some Dutch courage to publicly castigate Google and its parasitic ways. It certainly wasn’t the first shot fired in anger at the algorithm with a copyright blind-spot, but it was a particularly conspicuous comment to make.  So while News Corp locks itself up behind the door marked “Special Projects, Scenario Planning”, the latest music whiz kid, Spotify, with its elegant UI and unfaltering streaming technology, makes the simple point to customers: mediocrity is free (160Kbps), while quality (320 Kbps) will cost. Likewise, it’s time for News Corp, or that other renowned first-mover, Fairfax Digital, to swallow the courage cookie, take a deep breath, and politely remind Google and every other freeloader of the same dictum.