I think one of the main challenges here is subscription-overload. Once you have a subscription to, say, the NY times, and the Washington Post, you're unlikely to get a third subscription to read an article on the Economist.
Charging, say, 10¢ for the article can help them generate revenue from those that don't want to shell out for another subscription.
I think one of the main challenges here is subscription-overload.
Bingo! I had been using Patreon as a "poor man's micropayments." I was implementing the "spend what you would on a cable subscription" idea and spreading mostly $1 payments across nearly 40 YouTubers. I would love a system that just makes micropayments as I browse/watch.
I think Flattr now has a system that is close to what you describe for YouTube. Micropayments are hard and Patreon is the 1st company to produce serious results experiments like Steem are interesting but siloed in the cryptosphere.
Charging, say, 10¢ for the article can help them generate revenue from those that don't want to shell out for another subscription.