The guys at Jalipo think so - they have just launched a Flash-based player that charges users for access and pays the content providers. I think we know who'll like this system.
You could think of web TV offerings in four ways: advertising supported, pay-per-view and subscription. And totally wild west free-for-all. The latter might not be a business model exactly, but that is where the competition is for online content providers.
So why would a consumer choose to pay for content, rather than get it for free or for free with advertising?
Alex Taylor, chief executive of Jalipo, said there is room for both services. Advertising-supported content tends to be shorter, lower quality, he said. Jalipo is aiming at long-form content at high quality, both on-demand and live streaming.
The interface is in Flash; Jalipo partnered with Adobe on the technology behind the service. Users buy credits to access the content, but the content providers can choose the rate to sell at, so a major sports event might be £10 for the afternoon and a regular news feed might be set at £1 for the day, or whatever.
What's interesting here is that Jalipo includes the kind of virability (sorry) that made YouTube such a killer concept. Eventually (the service only launched in open beta yesterday, so give them a chance) users will be able to embed the player into their sites, just as you can with YouTube clips. But the clever thing is that the payment system is built in, so no matter which site the player sits on, the content provider still gets paid. And actually the person that hosts the content gets paid too, so there's an extra incentive in there. Revenue split is 80% for the content company and 20% for Jalipo. The revenue share for people that syndicate the content will be set by the content company.
I did ask, but Taylor said he's not interested in selling the technology to YouTube just yet.
As for rights, those are also built in to the player. The player detects the location of the user and the content adjusts accordingly.
The service so far includes BBC World, Al-Jazeera English, Deutsche Welle, France 24 and Bloomberg, as well as a few sports events and indie films. Plenty more to come this week too, I'd imagine.
The really interesting part is the revenue share for consumers. Everyone's a winner.
