Britain's Idiomag is a cultural journalism aggregator that found an early success in the link economy.
It made an effort to licence such suppliers as Billboard and Rolling Stone for music journalism and carry them across its platform free to users. It developed some handy widgets that permitted people to see what their friends were reading, too.
In so doing it discovered the that the value chain in the digital sphere isn't particularly about subscription or licensing but in getting reward from links.
Co-founder Andrew Davies now is categorical: Paid-for content will die in the mainstream because people are finding too many ways to circumvent any attempts to charge for access. They'll happily see advertising or participate in some social networking, but forget about footing a bill.
