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"We've been pretty deliberate about saying that the best place you can experience journalism is through a relationship with a news provider. So far for us, that has meant a direct relationship with users. The more we have a relationship with users, the better we think our business will be, and the better the experience that we can provide to them."

Give me a break. Its all about the numbers. And rightly so. Putting it in really simple terms, If the NYT has 50 subscribers and Apple comes to them and says, "We guarantee we will DOUBLE, thats right, double your subscribers if you join us"
Well, the NYT would end up making LESS money then they do now. 50 subscribers @ $15per equals $750
Whereas if they got 100 @ $5........$500. No thanks and again, they are right to say so. Just dont act like you need this close personal relationship with your customers blah blah blah.

NYT wouldn't be getting $5 (50% of $9.99 monthly subscription price).

That 50% gets split between all (300?) publications.
 
Obtuse. Old people, my parents for example, like to read their physical paper news paper and I do not see them switching to News+. Young people (gen x and younger) mostly read online but do not read newspapers much and they would likely read NYT through News+ so I am guessing most of apple readership would be incremental to current customers.

As soon as I heard about News+ I wondered how the NYTimes would deal with it, assuming that they wouldn't want to lose the direct subscriptions. I pay for the NYT and view it through their app. Quite fine with me (but I'm and oldster). The New Yorker is on News+ but only partial coverage so I guess I'll keep that sub too. Might drop WaPo if full content is on News+.
 
"The more we have a relationship with users, the better we think our business will be, and the better the experience that we can provide to them."

Read this as "We offer our subscribers targeted advertising in order to maximize our profits."
It's not about increasing subscriptions. It's the advertising dollars.
 
In terms of taking things "seriously"... :p

I don't blame these publications. If they are successfully collecting $10-15 directly from subscribers, then it doesn't make sense for them to drop down to $4-5 under a deal with Apple. But the tides will change when their current subscriber base stops paying for a single-publication subscription. Apple News+ brings news from across many publications, which seems like a far more level playing field than getting all of your news from one source. They won't be able to hold out for long.


Some of us actually read more than one newspaper. News + is good for getting an overview of the news but for in-depth coverage I'll still go with the big papers.
 
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I'm trying News+ but am not likely to keep it past the end of the trial. A big reason why is exactly because there isn't much news. National Geographic is the most interesting part to me and if I could spend $1 or $2 a month to keep that (is that possible? I should look into it) I'd keep just that.

I do read the NYTimes and I get the web edition at no cost because of educational affilation, and its addition to News+ would likely boost Apple's chances of keeping me as a subscriber. Same with the Washington Post. Both have excellent non-political (politics news just doesn't interest me much) coverage; the NYT's science stuff is especially good.

Oh well. The educational affiliation will keep on serving even if Apple doesn't want to. I just wish I could get Apple News to see the subscription.
 
"We've been pretty deliberate about saying that the best place you can experience journalism is through a relationship with a news provider. So far for us, that has meant a direct relationship with users. The more we have a relationship with users, the better we think our business will be, and the better the experience that we can provide to them."

Give me a break. Its all about the numbers. And rightly so. Putting it in really simple terms, If the NYT has 50 subscribers and Apple comes to them and says, "We guarantee we will DOUBLE, thats right, double your subscribers if you join us"
Well, the NYT would end up making LESS money then they do now. 50 subscribers @ $15per equals $750
Whereas if they got 100 @ $5........$500. No thanks and again, they are right to say so. Just dont act like you need this close personal relationship with your customers blah blah blah.

So many people are apparently assuming that if Apple takes a 50% share, NYT or WaPo would get the other 50% EACH. But that's apparently totally off track, as the remaining USD 5 have to be shared among 2 full newspapers and 300 magazines. Or, if both had actually subscribed to the scheme, 4 full newspapers and the magazines. And if the service catches on, both numbers are bound to increase, so the share will actually decrease.
So my guess would rather be that WSJ will (or NYT would, if they had subscribed) maybe 10 ct of each user's fee. That means for every 'lost' direct subscriber Apple needs to come up with 150 News+ subscribers. And then the outlet would still lose all the telemetry and user data.
 
I mean, it makes sense. Both newspapers want to know the readers who subscribe to their respective papers. Granted, I would prefer to subscribe to either newspaper via Apple as they make it super easy to cancel your subscription. But at the same time, I always call NYT prior to my subscription being up, say I want to cancel, and they end up offering me six months for $7.50/month.

In the end, it's Apple who is actually losing out. Not WaPo or NYT.
 
NYT wouldn't be getting $5 (50% of $9.99 monthly subscription price).

That 50% gets split between all (300?) publications.

I’ve wondered this also. I mean all the publications in the Apple News+ expect to be paid. They would really be making pennies. If this is the case then expect News+ prices to increase relatively fast.
 
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RE: "told Vanity Fairthat the newspaper wants to have a direct relationship with its readers."

It is the single most-important factor !
 
Does anyone know if News+ strips the publisher’s major advertiser’s adverts or are they kept. If kept I’d imagine they could tell their advertisers to pay more for much greater readership, if stripped it would be lose-lose for both advertiser and the paper.
 
Good for the Times and good for WaPo. I already subscribe to both via their respective apps.
 
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I applaud any publisher who is not willing to give up 50% of their profits for little to nothing.


OK, you've got your jab at Apple in. Now let's examine your claim, which is false on its face. Apple didn't ask anyone to "give up 50% of their profits."

Apple, reportedly proposed that 50% of the revenue from subscriptions to Apple News Plus would go to the publishers split up based on the number of readers who read an articles from a particular publisher. This could be a net loss for a publisher if their share of the 50% is less than any loss in subscribers, OR, if Apple is correct, could have been a windfall in profits if Apple News Plus brings millions more readers to the NYT's articles. Remember, Apple News has been a wild success with about 100 million regular users and is now the largest news service in the world!

Not only might the NYT have gained a windfall in their cut of the subscription payments, but having millions more readers would enable them to charge higher advertising rates which is the bulk of their income, and of which they get 100% and Apple gets nothing despite bringing millions of readers to them.

That's the facts without the emotion. As one of the major magazine publishers said, what counts isn't your percentage, it's the bottom line in "are you making more money?" We know the magazine publishers, who have been working with the model for a while under Texture, think it is to their financial benefit to participate as the number of magazine publishers participating has grown by 50% since Apple took over. Whether the model works for newspaper publishers remains to be seen.
 
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Obtuse. Old people, my parents for example, like to read their physical paper news paper and I do not see them switching to News+. Young people (gen x and younger) mostly read online but do not read newspapers much and they would likely read NYT through News+ so I am guessing most of apple readership would be incremental to current customers.

new york times makes 800-900mil from subscrptions and that amount has been growing.
on chrome u can read nyt for free
 
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Honestly, this was the dealbreaker for me. I subscribe to NYT at a discount. It's absolutely worth it. Adding Car&Driver and Golf Magazine don't make any difference to me.
 
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