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.
Hence platforms like axate, which make micropayments trivial.
Want to read that NYT article? Fine, pay the 30 cents and read it. Want to read all the NYT articles? Subscribe for $20 a week.
If Youtube wasn't owned by an advert company you could have the same -- creators could have a "pay 50c to watch this 30 minute video without adverts". I believe (haven't had youtube adverts for years) that the ad rates for western viewers are under 1 cent per view, with 1 advert every 5 minutes, so a 30 minute video would be 6 adverts or 5 cents. Youtube even has the funding built in via the "tip" mechanism.
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)
Maybe. I don't know how fantastic Apple's combined subscriptions are doing. Their news one is already priced higher than that (but I guess you get a lot of news sources).
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.