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Apple Courting Publishers by Comparing News Service to Apple Music, but Most Say Logic is Flawed

truthertech said:
That's the old model. In a digital world, you can appeal to both the consumers who are devoted to that "niche" as well as the much larger and vast audience who would enjoy a particular article, e.g., I may not be a devotee of Vanity Fair in general and would never pay for it, but they sometimes have great articles on a particular subject. Apple's new service can uniquely expose that article to a likely tens of millions of folks who will subscribe to a news/magazine service that will put a huge number of eyeballs, think advertising rates, who would never otherwise see that article and accompanying ads.
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I guess it depends on how many articles you intend to read. I don't subscribe to Wired, but every now and then I find an article I want to read. At this rate, I don't seem to be reading enough to go over my "free article" limit so to me this subscription service wouldn't be necessary. But if you read more, I guess I could see how it might work.
 
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I'm sorry, but as a consumer of newspapers and magazines, I don't understand how people just read one source? I have magazines for business, for tech, for computer/graphic design, home, cooking, and others like Time and national geographic. Then for news, I can't use only one newspaper source - Washington Post, NYT, Wall Street Journal, local papers, etc.

And that is not just for me, but my entire family.

If I could get one subscription to consolidate all of those publications, and each family member could choose their own favorites and read at their leisure, I definitely see the comparison to Apple Music.
 
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ThisBougieLife said:
I guess it depends on how many articles you intend to read. I don't subscribe to Wired, but every now and then I find an article I want to read. At this rate, I don't seem to be reading enough to go over my "free article" limit so to me this subscription service wouldn't be necessary. But if you read more, I guess I could see how it might work.
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Bingo! Wired doesn't have enough quality material to attract you to pay to subscribe, but you have a mechanism to read those few "for free." Think of that "model" on a wide scale with hundreds of publishers. That's how Apple's new service is likely to work. why discovery remains the key. Right now there is so much crap out there. I think adding magazines, where there tends to be longer, more in depth and better written articles, is a key piece. Right now those are hidden from most non-subscribers.
 
Come join our news service...as long as you politically agree with us or we'll "curate" your butt off the platform.
 
I don’t have any problems reading news. And that’s the issue. Apple isn’t solving anything or making an experience better. They are desperate for services revenue. Video will be a loser for them. This news thing won’t even be around in a few years as apple quietly abandons it.

Services means lots of things. Maybe apple will figure it out later.
 
Greymacuser said:
Come join our news service...as long as you politically agree with us or we'll "curate" your butt off the platform.
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Yeah, maybe they could divide it into biased "packages". If you order the Red Package, you get Fox News, Breitbart, all pro-Trump all day :) The Blue Package would have Daily Kos, CNN, and have the opposite message. "Select Your Bias and a guaranteed biased curator will make sure you're only exposed to news you agree with!"
 
tazinlwfl said:
I'm sorry, but as a consumer of newspapers and magazines, I don't understand how people just read one source? I have magazines for business, for tech, for computer/graphic design, home, cooking, and others like Time and national geographic. Then for news, I can't use only one newspaper source - Washington Post, NYT, Wall Street Journal, local papers, etc.

And that is not just for me, but my entire family.

If I could get one subscription to consolidate all of those publications, and each family member could choose their own favorites and read at their leisure, I definitely see the comparison to Apple Music.
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Do you have a complete list for your family? I would be interested if you could check back in after the event and let us know what percentage of your magazines would be available with Apple's subscription?
 
Frankied22 said:
I think this whole news subscription is silly. There is a reason none of these other news subscription services ever took off mainstream - the majority of people don't give a **** about paying for news they can get anywhere else on the internet for free. Journalism today is a joke and so is most news articles. It's a race to get clicks with the most clickbait headlines and meaningless articles to drive search traffic. It's garbage standing upon advertising, and most people don't care. People say well if you pay for news then we will get better news! I say yea right, keep dreaming. Real journalism is pretty much dead and news is mostly one-sided propaganda ********. Theres no going back now that people's attention spans are no longer than reading a headline and the written word is plastered all over the internet for free.

Apple are in la la land on this one.
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And yet when you see a headline and story from a mainstream publication, you give it more attention than you do a blog or website that just reposts that same story or just posts clickbait. We all do. That proves that journalism and brand value still holds value for all of us. Let's not pretend that a few years of Internet-fueled sensationalistic headlines and a President declaring everything making him look bad as fake news has changed our reading habits that much.
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Khedron said:
Do you have a complete list for your family? I would be interested if you could check back in after the event and let us know what percentage of your magazines would be available with Apple's subscription?
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Based upon the rumors, every magazine will be available but there will be a few major gaps in the serious news sources.

Reminds me a little of exclusivity. Some streaming music services get artists exclusively for a limited window and that might be enough to persuade or dissuade consumers from subscribing based on their preferences. Same goes for news.
 
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I like the idea of paying one fee to have all kinds of news sources under one roof. Super convenient. Don't have to worry about access. I tend to enjoy a breadth of content. But I'm not going to subscribe to lots of different magazines as most of the content of most magazines isn't going to appeal to me. But if the magazines were under my news subscription then I could browse them and find articles that interest me or come across featured articles from those magazines and those magazines would get some money from me. Now they get zero. I suspect these magazines don't realize there is money to be made by collecting a little from lots of readers in addition to collecting more from a few.

To me the position of newspapers and magazines is a bit like saying no one is a fan of all the videos on youtube. IT's missing the pt.
 
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This news executive is inadvertently making the case for how Apple News will help existing newspaper subscriptions preserve their revenues:

Plus, most people don't want 100 magazines; they just want the ones they're already fans of.
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If a subscriber to the Washington Post ends their $10 per month subscription, the $5 that Apple will distribute to publishers will be split to a few other newspapers but this person will spend far more time reading the Washington Post given their demonstrated priority interest in it since they were willing to pay $10 for it. WaPo will get the majority of that $5 share but now they'll have access to far more subscribers in the pool.

The advantage will come in increased volume of subscribers. Like with music, far too many people didn't buy music at all because they could never afford to buy all the music they love. So they found a way to steal it. When iTunes and services like Spotify and Apple Music made it so convenient and such a good deal to get all you can eat music for $9.99, people who never paid for music, jumped at the opportunity. The same will happen with written content.

Right now, how many people pay to subscribe to news? 1 in 10? No way. 1 in 100? 1 in 1000? I think it's much much lower than that. People in general don't subscribe to paid news because they could never afford to subscribe to all their favourite publications. When they can access everything for one price, that ratio is going to end up being around 1 in 5.
 
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78Bandit said:
I'm currently paying $20 a month for the Wall Street Journal, $4 a month for Washington Post through the Amazon Prime special, and $10 a month for my local Gannett owned news source. I am willing to pay for well written, researched, generally reliable news sources. [...]
If I can get the same content for $10 a month for Apple News then I'll be saving almost $300 per year.
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The question is wether those subscriptions are heavily overpriced and if not, wether the possibly broader audience from Apple’s service can make up for the loss of subscribers.

Otherwise I don’t see how this could be a sustainable business model for anyone but Apple.
 
Frankied22 said:
I think this whole news subscription is silly. There is a reason none of these other news subscription services ever took off mainstream - the majority of people don't give a **** about paying for news they can get anywhere else on the internet for free. Journalism today is a joke and so is most news articles. It's a race to get clicks with the most clickbait headlines and meaningless articles to drive search traffic. It's garbage standing upon advertising, and most people don't care. People say well if you pay for news then we will get better news! I say yea right, keep dreaming. Real journalism is pretty much dead and news is mostly one-sided propaganda ********. Theres no going back now that people's attention spans are no longer than reading a headline and the written word is plastered all over the internet for free.

Apple are in la la land on this one.
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I agree with you. I hardly watch the news on TV or listen to it on radio and to add what you already said, there is a lot of negativity reported. I used to buy newspaper everyday and have not bought one for many years now so I am not about to start paying for news. I am only interested in the weather report so I use the weather app.
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slide_to_unlock said:
Can I pay fake money for fake news? :D
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Ding ding! Great answer!
 
dominiongamma said:
When it’s free they are selling your data likely
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Honestly, in my experience, no site uses tracking cookies more than Macrumors does. They always have bang up to date adverts relating to the things that I've been recently surfing for.
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dumastudetto said:
Publishers have two choices:
1. Get on board with Apple's compelling offering to consumers
2. Become completely irrelevant.
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It isn't forced to be compelling. I don't care for Apple Music, for example.
 
I'm ready to pay for news. The articles have to be authoritative and curated, though. Not a bunch of cut & paste news from other sources (not only this, at least) or clickbait stuff.

Moreover, the reading tool (the app or whatever it's called) should offer the possibility to save / categorize articles and search through them easily.

Now, when I browse through Apple News, I feel like I'm strolling in a fun fair. I'm overwhelmed with news. Sure, some are interesting. Still, I sense being lost in an infinite stream of articles. I've to say that this is a common issue with all social networks.

You can only "save" an article which is put in a general container of saved articles with no possibility to tag or keep organized in folders. Searching is very limited too.

It's impossible to keep a bookmark or mark an article where you stop reading to resume it later. Twitterrific smartly solved a similar shortcoming with Twitter with the Synced Reading Position.

My main news source is Feedly where I can categorize, save, tag, note, highlight and search the articles. The old, good RSS which, in my opinion, is still a very valid and valuable tool. Can't get why some declare that it's old and surpassed technology.

I hope Apple will improve the News app and the whole news subscription experience in this sense.
 
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netdudeuk said:
It isn't forced to be compelling. I don't care for Apple Music, for example.
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Apple Music isn't even remotely compelling for me either. Over 3 years you'd pay $540 and at the end own nothing. I could buy every album I like over that time and still come out way cheaper. YMMV.
 
Honestly, there isn't enough legitimate news for even one magazine or newspaper, why would I want multiple?
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Marco Klobas said:
I'm ready to pay for news. The articles have to be authoritative and curated, though. Not a bunch of cut & paste news from other sources (not only this, at least) or clickbait stuff.

Moreover, the reading tool (the app or whatever it's called) should offer the possibility to save / categorize articles and search through them easily.

Now, when I browse through Apple News, I feel like I'm strolling in a fun fair. I'm overwhelmed with news. Sure, some are interesting. Still, I sense being lost in an infinite stream of articles. I've to say that this is a common issue with all social networks.

You can only "save" an article which is put in a general container of saved articles with no possibility to tag or keep organized in folders. Searching is very limited too.

It's impossible to keep a bookmark or mark an article where you stop reading to resume it later. Twitterrific smartly solved a similar shortcoming with Twitter with the Synced Reading Position.

My main news source is Feedly where I can categorize, save, tag, note, highlight and search the articles. The old, good RSS which, in my opinion, is still a very valid and valuable tool. Can't get why some declare that it's old and surpassed technology.

I hope Apple will improve the News app and the whole news subscription experience in this sense.
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They also would have to be true news and not opinion pieces, but state the facts and nothing more than the facts with no editorials, etc.
 
Khedron said:
Apple Music isn't even remotely compelling for me either. Over 3 years you'd pay $540 and at the end own nothing. I could buy every album I like over that time and still come out way cheaper. YMMV.
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Same here. I do, however, pay the $25 a year for iTunes Match so I can get my entire CD collection in the cloud and available anywhere. I have around 300 CDs collected since 1985 I ripped in lossless format to my computer that covers pretty much everything I listen to. Occasionally I'll get a "best of" compilation off Amazon for $5 and add it to my collection.
 
You can do that with music as people wanna browse music/artists so that's where Apple music strives the best

You can't always do that with news, as no one wants thousands of magazines, Plus Apple is an eco-system of its own.

You can control the music, but i think controlling the news goes too far on a platform. You download "per apps" because no one likes bundles.. yet you are seeing this with Apple...

Give me the per subscription any-day... at least users have full control
 
ThisBougieLife said:
Yeah, maybe they could divide it into biased "packages". If you order the Red Package, you get Fox News, Breitbart, all pro-Trump all day :) The Blue Package would have Daily Kos, CNN, and have the opposite message. "Select Your Bias and a guaranteed biased curator will make sure you're only exposed to news you agree with!"
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Like virtually everything Apple does, you can decide for yourself what you want and don’t want to see.
 
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