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I agree it makes little sense for them.

Apple is very good at commoditising others' work. Turning the content (music, movies, apps, now news) into cheap commodities that help sell Apple products at high margins. Plus Apple gets a (big) cut on the service end, so it's win-win; for Apple.

I'd be very skeptical it always makes sense for the content producers though. They reduce their cut substantially; plus they concede control of the market and lose contact with their customer base. If everyone signs up, Apple becomes a Goliath that is very hard to argue/deal/bargain with.


Well, fortunately for Apple, we already know you are wrong. Magazines have been part of Texture for years under this model!
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I agree that a news subscription is a good idea; that's why I was curious about it in the first place.

The 50% revenue split is what I have a problem with. Apple cannot seriously claim that they deserve a cut level with the people who actually create the content. They're just trying to throw their weight around.


You're forgetting about the advertising dollars which Apple gets ZERO from. I get it, most people don't understand the business. Subscriptions mean little to most publishers, so giving up 50% of it, is well worth it to get new eyeballs that will lead to higher advertising dollars which is where the big dollars are! Vanity Fair isn't making it off the price you pay at the newsstand, indeed, they may be losing money on each one they sell. They are making it off the ad for Coach purses that you see when you read an article in it.

There's only a tiny number of publishers, e.g., NYT that have a substantial digital subscription service, but even they only have about 1-2 million. WSJ has large on line subscription but they see value, and I think they are right, in having tens of millions more people reading their articles. WSJ has broad appeal. In contrast, WAPO has such a defined political slant, along with NYT that they may understandably fear they have already captured the readers that are interested in reading their content. Apple News is already huge, about a hundred million monthly readers and a large number will jump at this with WSJ alone being a huge bargain.
 
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this subscription service is gonna fail

I don't think this is going to fail. Think about it this way, 3 million people pay 10 bucks a month just for nytimes. I'm one of them. So, if nyt got on board here, it would be a no brainer for me. I'm likely going to try it anyway. If you like news, than getting some new access is exciting. It doesn't need to be widely adopted
 
The only news outlets who might be served by using Apple for distribution are new, lesser known, or perhaps regional organizations like individual NPR content providers with independent local features/content. They might actually stand to gain a little with increased distribution, even with a 50% hit. Major content providers have nothing to gain.


You don't know how the magazines and newspapers financials work. Subscriptions are the smallest portion of revenue-they survive on advertising, which is why they have been going out of business as ad revenue declines because so few people are reading their articles. This is why hundreds of magazines jumped on Texture; their best hope of staying in business is to get more eyeballs on articles which leads to more advertising dollars. WSJ will likely get tens of millions more readers for many articles, an amazing boost in revenue for them, mainly from advertising rates. I can see how WAPO and NYT fear the unmet appetite to read their articles is perhaps more limited.
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News & content curated by Apple? Yeah no thanks. I don't want Lil' Timmy's agenda shoved down my throat


That's not how this will work or works now. Yes, their is a curated portion, but you can ignore that (you can also block sources in the curated portion although they make it more difficult than it used to be) and also simply read the sources you want. When they add magazines and previously paywalled services you will be able to peruse them as you want.
 
I’m in for this reason alone:

“Apple is also declining to provide credit card information or email addresses to publishers, details that news sites use to create customer databases and market their products, and they're asking partners to provide unlimited access to content.”

Hopefully there’s a family subscription plan!

Oh I’m fully aware of that. However if they aren’t there at all I don’t have to.
 
Remember Mac Life/Mac Addict magazine? Ahh the good old days. I was just cleaning my office at home a came across every issue on a shelf. Funny how if you read the news stories, little has changed. I cannot think of a magazine or news paper I would want to pay for today. I hope I am wrong.

Journalism and editorializing were better quality before the Internet. Reporters weren’t speculators. They confronted the people they were writing about and got confirmation. If you reported hearsay or regurgitated others’ news, you were a gossip columnist. Reporters today want to be celebrities. They want to opine, not report. They want their photo to accompany their articles.

Fortunately, there are still many niche print magazines with modest, unhurried writings. God forbid they succumb to the narcissistic, frenetic medium that technologists created.
 
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You don't know how the magazines and newspapers financials work. Subscriptions are the smallest portion of revenue-they survive on advertising, which is why they have been going out of business as ad revenue declines because so few people are reading their articles. This is why hundreds of magazines jumped on Texture; their best hope of staying in business is to get more eyeballs on articles which leads to more advertising dollars.
I just know that, as part of my online subscriptions, an included feature is little or no advertising. That's a fairly common feature of online subscriptions or "premium" services. Youtube has a similar offering. Those kinds of offerings may be unique to online subscriptions, where popups and streaming interrupts are far more annoying than the old print advertisements, which were much easier to ignore and were often placed in sections of the paper or magazine devoted exclusively to advertising and/or "fluff" content. My assumption is that online subscription fees are charged according to the publisher's calculation of equivalent advertising revenue per user. As you say, advertising provided the bulk of the income of traditional print publications. As people began reading online rather than via print, traditional newspapers and magazines became less attractive for advertisers. Income for want-adds and job posting sections (the Classifieds) also steeply declined. The money-making model for online publishing is still evolving. I currently pay $16/month for NYT online, and really only get advertisements in sections like entertainment or real estate, where the primary content involves advertising. Those were the sections I generally ignored in print newspapers.
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If you want to subscribe for the WSJ it's about 29£/month. I can see a lot of people that are in the Apple ecosystem that could benefit a lot by paying less than half as much and having other newspapers included. It's actually a steal
If WSJ offers full access through the Apple News model, they apparently see it as a plus for them to participate. They currently offer digital subscriptions for $20/mo. for 6 months, or $16/mo. for 12 months. If they offer the same content through Apple for $10/mo. per subscriber, what is their loss compared to their regular subscription services? If Apple takes 50% off the top, does that mean all participating publishers get some small slice of the remaining $5/mo. per subscriber? That would be a rather huge hit financially, and would require a substantial increase in the subscriber base to come out even or make profit over the older model. Apparently NYT and WaPo didn't bite.
 
Remember Mac Life/Mac Addict magazine? Ahh the good old days. I was just cleaning my office at home a came across every issue on a shelf. Funny how if you read the news stories, little has changed. I cannot think of a magazine or news paper I would want to pay for today. I hope I am wrong.

OT but every now and then I find MacAddict CDs laying around in old boxes.
Those were the days when we fought for our meals.;)
 
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It seems to me most major publishers probably would not want to be part of this. Imagine not able to make a marketing campaign out of this. What good would this do if Apple gives their customer unlimited access, but the publisher will learn next to nothing about the customer?

When I buy a novel the bookstore learns nothing about me. When I buy comic books the retailer learns nothing about me. When I used to have my newspaper delivered (yes... I’m old!), the newspaper printer learned nothing about me. When I buy magazines the retailer learns nothing about me.
For literally hundreds and hundreds of years, published works have been enjoyed by umpteen billions of people WITHOUT THE PUBLISHER DATA MINING THE CONSUMER.
It is absolutely disgusting (in my eyes) that now “but I can’t creep on your information, that you have no interest in sharing with me” would be an argument that anyone would consider even remotely reasonable or valid.

If you get something for FREE (Facebook, et al), you could reasonably expect them to “pay themselves” by helping themselves to all the information they can glean...
However, if you actually PAY for a service- in what world should you also let them cyber stalk you & try to extract more cash from you??
 
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What would really work in my opinion is if these guys instituted a system in which I pay for the article I want to read. I have had a subscription to NYT three times and three times I have unsubscribed to it. I just read fewer and fewer articles until I stop reading all together. Then later they publish something I want to read. Just make it per article. Sometimes the WSJ has something interesting. But not often enough to make me want to pay their high subscription price.

Where I am concerned, all of these publishers at one time or another have something I am interested in. But none of them have something I am interested in on a daily basis. So Apple’s model is appealing. Right now I have a subscription to the Washington post because its cheap enough and publishes something I want often enough to justify the cost.

I like Apple’s news app a lot. I think this is a good idea. I guess we’ll see if that’s right or not. I do like that Apple is keeping our info out of their hands. I don’t like the whole BIG DATA thing going on. I just want to read an article here and there. Why they want so much info on top of me paying for access is beyond me. If they want it to make more money, just charge more for the access to the article and stop selling our data. I’m not okay with what they are doing with our data.
That is an interesting idea. While I prefer the model of unlimited access to the content of participating publishers, your pay per article idea might be more acceptable to a larger number of publishers. I still wouldn't like having to do it on a site by site basis (giving my credit card info to a dozen different newspapers) but Apple could easily facilitate letting me search for articles of interest across all the participating publishers and maybe even giving me the first 1 or 2 paragraphs free (like a preview of a song on iTunes). I could then click to read whatever articles I want and let Apple handle the billing and payments to the publisher. Apple could even set it up on a "credit" or "token" system where I pay $10 for 100 credits then each publisher could decide whether to charge 1, 2, 3 credits on an article by article basis depending on its length, quality, etc.

Like you, I also would prefer to do this through Apple for data privacy issues.
 
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The NYT is perhaps a different animal, but for others NOT adopting the Apple News model will for certain mean FEWER digital dollars for Newspapers/Magazines.

A big reason that Newspapers have been failing in droves in the last 10 years is because they have failed to adapt to new paradigms of the internet age.

Newspaper companies cite the paradox in the digital subscription model, because it inherently pilfering sales from print subscriptions, but this is short sited. Newspaper digital subscription services have never been a huge profit driver on their own merit.

One of the best practices I have seen is when Newspapers/Magazines include the digital access free with a print subscription. This is a great way to reward print subscribers and allow them to reap the benefits of the digital age. Newspapers/Magazines can continue to offer free access for print subscribers, as well as sell digital subscriptions (on their own), AND do the Apple News service without hurting their overall bottom line.

I hope the Apple News service success.
 
When I buy a novel the bookstore learns nothing about me. When I buy comic books the retailer learns nothing about me. When I used to have my newspaper delivered (yes... I’m old!), the newspaper printer learned nothing about me. When I buy magazines the retailer learns nothing about me.
For literally hundreds and hundreds of years, published works have been enjoyed by umpteen billions of people WITHOUT THE PUBLISHER DATA MINING THE CONSUMER.
It is absolutely disgusting (in my eyes) that now “but I can’t creep on your information, that you have no interest in sharing with me” would be an argument that anyone would consider even remotely reasonable or valid.

If you get something for FREE (Facebook, et al), you could reasonably expect them to “pay themselves” by helping themselves to all the information they can glean...
However, if you actually PAY for a service- in what world should you also let them cyber stalk you & try to extract more cash from you??

Anything delivered to your house, the retailer was able to sell off your information, that's why you got all of those mailed catalogs for decades. Anything paid with a credit card, the same deal. But I agree that Apple not giving away your details is a prized feature.

Even in 1980, if they had your address, they had a wealth of information, just knowing the demographics and average income of your neighborhood was valuable.
 
That is an interesting idea. While I prefer the model of unlimited access to the content of participating publishers, your pay per article idea might be more acceptable to a larger number of publishers. I still wouldn't like having to do it on a site by site basis (giving my credit card info to a dozen different newspapers) but Apple could easily facilitate letting me search for articles of interest across all the participating publishers and maybe even giving me the first 1 or 2 paragraphs free (like a preview of a song on iTunes). I could then click to read whatever articles I want and let Apple handle the billing and payments to the publisher. Apple could even set it up on a "credit" or "token" system where I pay $10 for 100 credits then each publisher could decide whether to charge 1, 2, 3 credits on an article by article basis depending on its length, quality, etc.

Like you, I also would prefer to do this through Apple for data privacy issues.

I think it is very fair. If I read only one WSJ article, the WSJ made a sale. If I lose interest in the articles, I'm not charged anything as I have not consumed anything. The whole thing about how it works now is like the old cable TV idea. I don't like WSJ enough to want everything they do. But that's not to say that I don't find anything they write interesting. Some of it is. And it could help the publishers focus more on what people actually consume.
 
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I don't think this is going to fail. Think about it this way, 3 million people pay 10 bucks a month just for nytimes. I'm one of them. So, if nyt got on board here, it would be a no brainer for me. I'm likely going to try it anyway. If you like news, than getting some new access is exciting. It doesn't need to be widely adopted

But the nyt isn’t going to get on board. So I’m not understanding your logic. Now if they were as well as most local papers. Sign me up. But this isn’t that. The wsj is a welcome surprise but I already get that free. Guess we’ll see who else.
 
But the nyt isn’t going to get on board. So I’m not understanding your logic. Now if they were as well as most local papers. Sign me up. But this isn’t that. The wsj is a welcome surprise but I already get that free. Guess we’ll see who else.

I understand his point as a counter to the many posters saying that no one would pay for news when the fact is that millions of people do. Add up all of the majors and it's a very big market. The more of these majors you bring it, the easier it'll be to sell.

What remains to be seen is whether the content from major providers is "selected content" or equivalent to the serviced they offer now. I'm pretty sure it's going to be just selected, as it would just cannibalize way too much of a publisher's revenue. This $10 model is $10 for *everyone*. How much does WSJ get? I can't imagine that it's more than $1.
 
This is reader friendly. Most of us don't want to give our personal information to publishers so they can resell and use it for their own purposes. Apple gives anonymized information to them, and gives the most important information: what is read !

Think about it. When you buy a newspaper at the newsstand, does the publisher get your personal information??????? Why would you be so anxious to give someone your private data????

The point of my post was to ask what gains do you get as a publisher. In this modern age, the whole idea of campaigning is to promote content to a targeted audience. With the way this is setup, only the publishers that are seeking purely for +1 visitors would benefit from this deal. Obviously as a consumer, we would prefer to be completely private.
 
I know it's too much to expect, but if they partnered with The Information in any capacity, it'd be remarkable.

I'm already paying $40 a month for that single news site, having that in addition to other sites without having to worry about ads would be great.
 
We'll probably never know but I would be curious if NYT and WP would have been more agreeable if Apple backed off the 50% subscription deal. That deal sounds absurd to me and I'm not surprised that the most popular news outlets want nothing to do with it.

Frankly for me without the NYT and WP this service is dead on arrival.
 
Tough to say one way or the other definitively having not seen the service, and it'll probably be up to the publisher, but I'm sure many will go with either all their digital content or all digital content from the last x weeks/months for Apple News subscribers.

That replica edition you mention is…unlikely, I'd say.

We have an answer: https://9to5mac.com/2019/03/24/wsj-tim-cook-services/

The News subscription will also cost $9.99 a month and will feature more than 200 magazines and content from newspapers including The Wall Street Journal. The available Journal content will include general ‘news, politics and lifestyle’ but business and finance news will be de-prioritized. The Journal is apparently hiring more reporters to feed content into the Apple News offering.

What is the point of WSJ content if the heart of their reporting will be excised.
 
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