I'm not sure upfront per-article micropayment is really that great. Comparing to traditional newspapers, the difference is that with the newspaper, you pay for a collection of articles, perhaps because you trust the paper to be interesting because of its reputation, perhaps because a headline caught your attention. Having paid, you also get added value from any number of articles you wouldn't have paid for on their own, and might not have even read if they were presented to you by themselves, for free. And yet you'd often find some of these articles the most interesting.
This doesn't happen if you're paying per article, based on a preview.
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.
This doesn't happen if you're paying per article, based on a preview.