There's also a very real factor that we now consume from dozens if not hundreds of sources per month.

The overhead, as a consumer, of managing any of this as actual subscriptions, transactions, or membership to some (likely multiple) sort of ecosystem would be substantial, even beyond just the money aspect.

It opens up room for bundling maybe? People want to pay one subscription for everything whenever possible, like Netflix originally vs now. If you could pay 10 a month for a major newspaper + YouTube + some other tech sites that could be pretty attractive. (or whatever combinations - news and sports, porn and tech, IDK)