Apple News+ Struggling to Get New Subscribers

[triangletechie]

Part of this is just general lack of interest. Another could be subscription fatigue. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO, Showtime, Disney+, Apple TV+ and that's just entertainment. Most customers are going to pick and choose what they will pay for on a monthly basis. A $10 news service is probably not high on the list.

 

[az431]

I thought this service was Vaporware, and it seems like Apple did too. Kinda ridiculous to think about the fact they held an event spanning hours long surrounding this crap, with only paid applause, but not even a mini event for AirPods Pro or the 16" MBP.

Media needs some kinda serious comeback (which I'm not sure they can recover from) that I'm of the belief transcends the medium it is delivered upon; and this aint it chief

Regular non-paywall News is an app I don't even access often really why would I pay for it?

You may want to google the term vaporware before using it in a sentence.

 

[Naaaaak]

Why use Apple News when you have RSS feeds and newsreaders? No RSS feed = site not worth reading.

 

[richpjr]

Where do y’all get information from? You do realize Apple News isn’t sending paper editions to people’s homes, right?

I usually go to Drudge Report, which links to online articles, some of which are included in Apple News. Same thing with looking up recipes or home ideas. I come across a link and get taken to a magazine website.

Saying NO ONE will purchase this service is a ridiculous statement. For someone that subscribed to Consumer Reports and Forbes, they would already be saving money. The problem is Apple’s doing a poor job of letting people know about what this is and how beneficial it can be.

LOL, yes I do realize that. My point was a lot of people (like my parents) would never read a newspaper article or magazine article on a phone or tablet, but do read physical papers.

 

[az431]

Apple apparently paid $485 million for Texture, and then had their own costs modifying it into News+.

200,000 people paying $10/month is $24 million per year. It would take Apple more than 20 years to recoup their costs, if they didn't have to pay for infrastructure costs and royalties to the magazine publishers.

There is no way Apple is breaking even on this one.

Your math is spot on, but there are several fatal flaws in your analysis:

1. No one outside of Apple knows the true number of subscribers. If the number is true, it would be less than a fraction of a percent of iOS users, and thus the number is highly suspect.

2. No one outside of Apple knows what Apple paid for Texture.

3. The reported "$485 million" was primarily to be paid through revenue sharing (assuming it's true), the up front price was reported to be $100 million.

4. It is unlikely that Apple's sole goal with Apple News is to turn a profit off subscription fees alone.


The true number of subscribers likely includes at least one more zero, which would mean Apple paid off the acquisition in 6 months. And even if it didn't, at this point Apple could probably care less whether this service that makes up .000001% of its revenues makes money or not.

 

[DevNull0]

Why use Apple News when you have RSS feeds and newsreaders? No RSS feed = site not worth reading.

Some random site using RSS to put out 100 character clickbait headlines for their semi-literate articles is not the same type of news as a decent news source with a good reputation. As long as you're content with the former which is nothing but a sensationalist byte to sell and ad-click, all I can say is good for you, enjoy your quality journalism.

 

[jonnyb098]

Im all for premium news , especially in 2019. But this is just too expensive considering what $10 gets you with something like Apple Music. Or what $5 gets you with Apple Arcade!

I knew this was gonna flop when they got up on stage and talked about how much we all love to go to news stands.....no apple, no we dont. I havent picked up a magazine at a news stand/store in nearly 15 years. With news SO disposable these days you can get it anywhere and for free on the web from hundreds of both crummy and reputable sites.

This needs to be $5 tops. Plain and simple.

 

[thadoggfather]

You may want to google the term vaporware before using it in a sentence.

It’s vaporware to me

Stop trying to make news+ happen. It’s not going to happen / actually become a thing (just because you’re happy to hurl your money at this one)

 

[bkaus]

Impossible to get back to home screen. To much “back” clicking.

 

[FightTheFuture]

Part of this is just general lack of interest. Another could be subscription fatigue. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO, Showtime, Disney+, Apple TV+ and that's just entertainment. Most customers are going to pick and choose what they will pay for on a monthly basis. A $10 news service is probably not high on the list.

Lack of interest sounds about right. I don't think enough people care about journalism, no matter how good it is, if you can get it for free. That said, I wouldn't group a News subscription with streaming entertainment. I don't think people choose between Spotify and News services. If they cared enough about either, they would pay for both.

 

[Ar40]

Apple Music: good.
Apple TV+: not very good (at least for now).
Apple News+: hardly anyone cares (and will probably stay that way).

Next up: Apple+ (music + tv + news) priced at $19.99/mo for a family plan.

You’re right - Apple TV+ isn’t “very good” - it’s actually amazing.

 

[DevNull0]

Saying NO ONE will purchase this service is a ridiculous statement. For someone that subscribed to Consumer Reports and Forbes, they would already be saving money. The problem is Apple’s doing a poor job of letting people know about what this is and how beneficial it can be.

Consumer reports is $30/year for a print subscription. Forbes is $20/year for a print subscription. That's just the single year price and without making any effort to look for a discount; usually you can even find a code if you look at the subscription card in a print copy at the book store. That's less than half the price of News+, so no you would not be saving money.

The problem is most of the magazines are niche and most people won't want more than a handful, and $120/year is going to be more expensive than just paying for the magazines you want for most people.

Most of the magazines Apple has are available very cheaply though subscription resellers. I once got 3 years of wired and popular science for under $20 total.

 

[PTLove]

There are few news organizations in this country with the resources to make quality content. Most content is simply not well written / researched.

I appreciate there are people out there that dislike NYT, WaPo, etc. but they do actually spend money on reporting, and have articles that are edited by someone with a degree. And they are not on the service.

They do have the WSJ, which is nice. But I can get it by itself cheaper than the service.

So in the end the service is just a bunch of bad quality news I do not care for.

 

[Steeley]

When it launched here in Australia it was basically only Murdoch papers and magazines. Just checked and it still is. Thanks but no thanks.

 

[Mr. Dee]

Uh, I can get all the news I want for a free already and I have the common sense to discern propaganda, fake news and true reporting. This is one area Apple is definitely gonna struggle with.

 

[MidwestMacGuy]

It is for a bunch of reasons:

1. The marketing. Apple News+? This is more than just news. There are a lot of good magazines, journals and periodicals that I'd not call news per se. It has a name that does not reflect what it is. Dumb.

2. Apple News+ is not really iPhone friendly. This should not be a suprise. Take a magazine sized format and shrink it down to a phone? Dumb. They should make it clearer that to get the maximum out of this you need to use an iPad. Once I started doing that, I enjoyed it a lot more and use it more.

3. The selection is OK, but I'm not sure the value is there yet. I love audio. Steriophile is there. I love cycling. There are several cycling magazines, and ProCycling about racing is my favorite. Woodworking, Home design, the movie industry. The real issue is I don't have enough free time to read everything I'd like. But I've started taking my iPad down to the breakfast table on Saturdays and Sundays and that helps. If I add them all up and the fact the family can share the account, it is a good value. But at $120 a year it is a lot more than I used to spend on hard copies of magazines. The value needs to be made more clear.

4. Functionality. There could be a better interface to save stories, organized them in a way to find them easily, and more interaction so that using an iPad with the magazine makes it more fun. That will take a platform that the content providers can use to make that all happen.

I'm sure Apple is working on these things. Give them time.

 

[Glockworkorange]

I was all set to disagree with you, but you're right, and thinking about your post you've completely changed my point of view. It seems the people who love and hate magazines are looking at them in two different ways. As a source of the latest news, they really are an obsolete format as so many of the people here have been saying.

But the magazines I read are things like Scientific American, where I want an in-depth interesting read at a reasonably sophisticated level. If I read it a few months after the research was published it doesn't matter at all, and the mainstream media articles on-line dumb it down to the point it's meaningless clickbait headlines. I also read hobby-centric magazines in areas like gaming, woodcraft, and electronics. Those are not time sensitive and they're just fun to read. I can read a day zero game review (or watch Youtube videos), but reading the in depth articles a few weeks later is still fun.

So I do like magazines and read several a month in different genres, but not really as a source of current event news. All the people here saying magazines are dead are pretty much saying as a source of news and they're right. Apple didn't help matters by calling the service News+ when, to be fair, way more than half the magazines in the service are not news magazines anyway (which is a very good thing).

Oh, I agree. I think your response was a more nuanced take on mine.

I do read Popular Mechanics and those type of pubs are sort of timeless.

I also read Sports Illustrated and the tech mags and a lot of that stuff is so dated as to be worthless.

 

[BarrettF77]

It was awful and I dropped Arcade today after being billed one time for it. The games suck and when Apple TV+ starts charging I'll be dropping it too. It's a terrible service with poor content.

Just watched the Mandorian on Disney+ and that is a glowing example of how to do things.

Cook, stick to hardware innovation and OS stability. These clearly need your attention more than Services that are half baked and world affairs. If you want to get into humanitarian endeavors, leave the company like Bill gates and give the reigns to someone who will do something good for users.

 

[charlituna]

Reason: nobody reads magazines anymore in the magazine format.

I know a lot of folks that read magazines. But it seems like the selection in the app is rather sparse and hasn’t changed much so far. That could be a big part of the issue

 

[Glockworkorange]

Not enough Breitbart for you?

That’s a slide comment, but there are a lack of conservative focused publications.

 

[Baymowe335]

Sadly, I think this is because most of the content people consume are headlines from CNN and Fox, YouTube challenges, Instagram butt pics, and twitter one liners.

If you have to spend more than 5 seconds reading, people move on to the next story.

 

[blacktape242]

no really shocked what so ever on this one....

 

[Glockworkorange]

It was awful and I dropped Arcade today after being billed one time for it. The games suck and when Apple TV+ starts charging I'll be dropping it too. It's a terrible service with poor content.

Just watched the Mandorian on Disney+ and that is a glowing example of how to do things.

Cook, stick to hardware innovation and OS stability. These clearly need your attention more than Services that are half baked and world affairs. If you want to get into humanitarian endeavors, leave the company like Bill gates and give the reigns to someone who will do something good for users.

I think a lot of the services feel forced and created SPECIFICALLY to generate revenue and not because anyone felt the products themselves were any good.

 

[BarrettF77]

Sadly, I think this is because most of the content people consume are headlines from CNN and Fox, YouTube challenges, Instagram butt pics, and twitter one liners.

If you have to spend more than 5 seconds reading, people move on to the next story.

Most of the news today has an agenda rather than letting the audience see and digest for themselves. I like reading stuff in full, but when it's even Rumor sites such as 9to5 doing an Op Ed on why the person writing says we need a widescreen MacBook, I turn off. Propose something to your audience, do not tell us what we need. At least I am not a sheep, independent thought is something I rather enjoy. Though many would run counter to this...

 

[Martinpa]

Like many are saying, a lot of people seem to find their news elsewhere... To me, specialty magazines are more interesting in terms of getting News+.

Two issues I've encountered with it though:

My mom reads tons of magazine, which are all available on News+, but her iPad mini doesn't support the version of iOS needed to run it. I understand they want people to upgrade eventually, and to be on the latest iOS version, but for what she does with her iPad, she doesn't want to spend the money. They should have their services be more widely available, at least to older versions of their own software. (Take a page out of Apple TV+'s book, and that one is available on competing hardware, on top of some "older" Apple hardware (like my parent's Apple TV 3rd gen without an App Store))

Apple could loosen their grip on Family Sharing, or make it somewhat more flexible. My mom, my sister and I (all adults with our own credit cards) used to share a Texture membership. Doing so with Apple News+ (if it was available on my mom's and my sister's devices) would mean having one person with their credit card attached to the Family Sharing, and needing to approve other people's purchases, and managing getting reimbursed. (I know the other users can use gift cards to go around that, but it's not always practical... plus I live in the US and they are in Canada, so I don't even know if Family Sharing would work, with me being on the US store, and them on the Canadian one).
The way Disney+, Netflix and others are doing it is far simpler and more flexible. Even if there was just an equivalent of Family Sharing but just for subscription services (cause I understand they might not want to go that far with App, Music and Video purchases), the chances of us signing up for it would be much greater. As it stands, they'd want us to get 3 separate single-user memberships, but they are getting 0. They could, instead, get one Family membership for the three of us. Still better (financially ,for them) than nothing.