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Apple Impasse With Magazines Over Subscriber Data
Pickens writes "Peter Kafka reports at All Things Digital that Apple and the publishing industry haven't been able to come to terms over magazine app subscriptions. Publishers want the ability to sell the subscriptions themselves, or at least the opportunity to hang on to subscribers' personal data, and Steve Jobs won't let them. Publishers also don't like the 30 percent cut that Apple wants to take in the iTunes store, but their real hang-up is lack of access to credit card and personal data. It's valuable to them for marketing because the demographic data helps magazines sell advertising, and without it they can't offer print/digital bundles. All Apple is willing to offer is an opt-in form for subscribers that would ask them for a limited amount of information: name, mailing address, email address."
They want access to the personnal and credit card data? If I buy a magazine at a kiosk, the guy takes my money, period. Apple is just a digital kiosk.
If their business model requires both to sell me the magazine AND have access to my data to be able to get money from ads on top of that, too bad for them.
You heard the man! If you don't like Apple protecting user data, go to a platform that does not!
I thought Ticketmaster was bad. Apple now runs what's left of the music industry with iTunes, and wants to do the same with publishing. Apple wants to a) squeeze out magazine publishers from being able to shift subscribers OUT OF Apple's store if they later choose, and b) Apple wants to be put themselves completely in the driver's seat with any possible online-only ad revenue for these magazines.
And it's completely their capitalistic right to do both - unless our regulated market realizes it's in the best interest of consumer choice to *not* allow Apple to have this potential stranglehold on information. What if Apple becomes the default magazine-delivery platform, and they decided they don't want to host any magazines OR ads that say good things about Android? Or mention that the new iPhone (x) has a tendency to explode?
I sure hope Apple doesn't succeed in this. If they do, it sure was nice living in a world where the average citizen had something like a fair shot.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
To me the whole thing is silly. These people have been complaining for years that paper and distribution costs are killing them, and that circulation is in the decline. Here is a model in which they can keep the ads but increase the number of adds as there is no incremental costs for ads in terms of delivery and paper costs, while increasing distribution. While I get annoyed that Architectural Digest has the first third of the magazine as ads, it is still a deal at less than $2 an issue. OTOH, They could have many more ads on iOS, linked to the advertiser, sell it for a dollar, and I would not be annoyed.
It seems this is second opportunity to traditional media to monetize on the web. Offer digital products, mostly supported by advertising, reduct traditional ineffecient infrastructure, and offer a product at a price that attracts new consumers.
Apple might be a driver in the process, like they were with music. Or the media companies could resist, as they did with movies which lead to distribution companies like Netflix making the profits at the expense of the media companies. At this point it can go either way.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black