I wish we could just have microtransactions to buy access to individual articles at a time. Like physical news stands letting you buy a newspaper or magazine.

There are so many times where I've bounced away from an interesting article because I didn't want to deal with the subscription paywall.

The argument for subscriptions is it helps cultivate a relationship with customers and gives the business recurring revenue. Which is fine if I want the relationship, like with Ars Technica, Wired where I'm usually interested in their reporting. But in most cases the relationship feels awkward and forced, like this linked article mentions.

Like I'm not paying $400/year to The Information just to unlock a one-off story.