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Comment by vinceguidry | Hacker News Reader

I'm not. Playboy's articles have always been tremendous. When I was younger I had a t-shirt with a Playboy logo on it and the phrase "I read the articles".

I'm starting to think we need a curation platform for long-form content. Preferably a subscription service that can solve the paywall problem elegantly. I don't use music subscription services because I want to keep the music, purchasing a file makes more sense. But I never save articles, I don't have the time to re-read them. Subscription seems perfect.

How much would I pay for such a service? Potentially a lot. If it could get me past any paywall or even just the most common ones I run into, I might pay a hundred bucks a month for it. I can consume a lot of long-form articles, many many more than I can books or movies. Subscribing to a magazine has too little signal-to-noise, I'm not looking for just any article to read. Nor do I have enough time to read a whole magazine.

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There is /r/thelongread or /r/longform I believe. Part of the problem is actually not discovery but availability – there just isn't that much longform content.

If you keep an eye on vanity fair, the atlantic, new yorker, the sunday times and a few others, you're likely to read most of the good stuff.

Better revenue streams might increase the supply. You are right that a model similar to music is needed – I'm not going to pay 100$+/year for a magazine subscription, but I'd gladly pay 40$/month for 'the netflix of journalism'. I've also seen quite a lot of writers publish kindle shorts which could become 'the itunes of journalism'.

40$ would be too much for most people though, right? When the dust settles it will be at <10$/€ per month like the music and movie streaming services for all-you-can-read.

Yea $40 is too much--at least for me. What I find weird about reading HN links is many times I get to the meat of the story by reading the free comments?

Actually, I think the free comments are what make HN great?

Also try thebrowser.com

Mostly free, but if you subscribe you will get lots more (great) mostly long-form articles, and in cases where the article would normally be behind a paywall, they will do a special version for thebrowser's paying customers.

Thanks. Reading the Bear Grylls article now. Their 1pass offering seems brilliant. Will explore more.

I'm sure you've seen this, but to those who want to get a start on a curated resource of longform articles, I've always liked the aptly named http://longform.org

If you don't have time to read a whole magazine once a month - or just the interesting-titled articles from it - then you're really not looking to read a lot.

I find glancing through the medium.com homepage works pretty well if I'm just looking for one or two stories to read.

That confused me a little as well, but I'm guessing he intended to mean he doesn't want to read a whole magazine, just the few quality long-form articles in it. As most magazines contain a lot of fluff, shorter columns or perhaps just long-form stories on subjects that don't interest him. ... I'm guessing.

Weighted upvotes?

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