This is an old belief. It is not a well-defined axiom. To begin with content was never king. Differentiated content was king. There is competition between content and connections. There are connections among people, across products  and across functional initiatives. These connections are leveraged. Consumers may take to your product not because of quality or price but because it connects people with each other. Product connections are important too. When CD sales declines there emerged iPods and MP3 broadband internet and music concerts. The concerts were priced low as an incentive for people to go and buy the CD. Later, free music emerged. It was incentivising users to go to live events. This is an illustration of product complements. The value of a product goes up whenever there is a complement.

Apple, Facebook and Amazon gained success by connecting users or products. They now play in content space, but content is not their core business. It is a product complement. They would like to make it cheap and widely available.

Readers pay for content as long as it is differentiated. Readers do not pay for similar content. Still readers could be ready to pay for its complements. Young consumers are reluctant to pay for music, but are ready to pay for hardware, smartphones, live events and internet access.