This is the whole micropayment conundrum that Clay Shirky wrote about when it first reared its head during the original dot-com era. In principle, if most content were wired into some common payment system, the thought is that people would be willing to pay 5 cents for an article/podcast/etc.

In practice, the wiring of everything together, the establishment of pricing, and (Shirky's argument) the mental transaction costs of having to decide whether to make constant small purchases has made this model very elusive.