Is Premium Content Market 35 Times Bigger Than Reported?

That’s according to a new research by Outsell Inc, though I am not sure if the actual size matters. The online paid content market is 35 times larger than commonly reported, at about $50 billion, according to Outsell…

In this specific piece of research, Outsell has included some areas not typically included by the likes of Online Publishers Association: cell phones, pagers, Blackberries, Palm Pilots, e-mail, speakerphones (!!), iPods, and satellite TVs and radios. (and I hope that radio is digital radio or satellite radio).

Something I’ve advocated here before: “Successful models are about ‘both/and': both advertising supported and user fee supported; both subscription and transactional; both fixed product bundles and pick-and-choose user customization. But the people framing the debate as ‘fee versus free’ have hijacked the discussion and succeeded in snookering analysts, the media, and the content-buying public.”

My take: the overall size of the premium content market doesn’t matter…each specific areas has its own separate market size, for for publishers, that’s what matters…

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