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."

Comments

Credit Card data?

[Yvan256]

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.

Re:Credit Card data?

[Stregano]

Well Apple already has all of that data, so to get anti-corporation about your personal data is a little silly.

Also, besides porn, who goes to magazine kiosks anyway? Even mentioning going to a kiosk here in /. is like telling me I have to put on pants to program: "It's not happening"

Re:Credit Card data?

[bmo]

People like you don't matter to the magazine publishers. Indeed, magazine publishers could do just fine without the newsstand vending because that's not where the bulk of their subscribers come from. The only thing newsstand vending does for them, really, is get new subscribers to sell ads for.

Indeed, the vast bulk of the money they make is from advertisers, not from the subscriptions. The subscriptions are gravy.

So yes, this is a very big deal for them to not get demographics. Without it, you'd see Newsweek, Time, etc., at 8 bucks/week to make up for the advertising loss.

--
BMO

Re:Credit Card data?

[dfm3]

They want access to the personnal and credit card data? If I buy a magazine at a kiosk, the guy takes my money, period.

Well then you wouldn't exactly be a subscriber, would you?

Ever wonder why most magazines cost $5-9 at a newsstand, but you can often get a year's subscription to the same magazine for $2-4 per issue? Hint: they're not just making money off of the subscription. The types of magazines a person is interested in can tell marketers quite a bit about their interests, and there's good money to be made in consumer profiling.

Re:Credit Card data?

[wiggles]

"If I buy a magazine at a kiosk, the guy takes my money, period." ...but if you get a subscription, you pay around 10% of the cost of purchasing each edition individually because the magazine gets your personal data (name, address, telephone number, personal interests) that they then sell to advertisers. That's been their business model for eons. How do you think they produce telemarketing lists?

Re:Credit Card data?

[Tharsman]

Well Apple already has all of that data, so to get anti-corporation about your personal data is a little silly.

Here is the deal, though: most (sensible) anti-corporation people that complain about personal data do so precisely because they dislike their data being shared afterwards. Apple is doing precisely what I want any company I entrust with my data to do: refuse sharing it.

Re:Credit Card data?

[sexconker]

Ever wonder why most magazines cost $5-9 at a newsstand, but you can often get a year's subscription to the same magazine for $2-4 per issue? Hint: they're not just making money off of the subscription. The types of magazines a person is interested in can tell marketers quite a bit about their interests, and there's good money to be made in consumer profiling.

No. It's because 12 * 3 > 4 * 5 .
Someone who buys at a newsstand will, on average, NOT buy anywhere near the full year's worth of issues. They'll buy, on average, 3 or 4 issues over the entire year.

And when you buy from a newsstand, the newsstand makes a profit (shocking, I know!). And if you think that's a razor-thin profit, think again. At one point the Sunday Los Angeles Times cost me 37.5 cents a paper, while I turned around and sold it for the newsstand price of $1.50.

And by "me" I mean "me". That is to say, I've done this before and I know what I'm talking about.

Re:Credit Card data?

[IsaacD]

I (might?) live in Atlanta, but each month I hire nineteen different homeless people in nineteen different cities and give them each enough money to hire another homeless person that buys one random magazine and an envelope for it. I also give them nineteen different addresses that I have in a one time pad, but only one of those addresses is my neighbor's. When a magazine arrives, I steal it from my neighbor's mailbox, but only after disguising myself as the neighbor's sister. The bulge is hard to hide in a dress, the bums sometimes steal my money, and I never know what magazine I'll get - but damnit if I am going to let anyone target me in an advertisement!! Oh, and I chose nineteen because it's a prime number, but the government is working to fix that.

Re:Credit Card data?

[mcmonkey]

I'm going to make the same argument, but in the opposite direction.

If I call the magazine to purchase a subscription and have the magazine delivered by USPS, neither the phone company nor the post office needs my credit card data.

The phone lines and postage need to be paid for, but those parties need no access to the particulars of my transaction with the magazine company.

Likewise, Apple is just connecting one entity to another. If I've paid Apple for the iPad and paid AT&T for the bandwidth, why does either need to know which credit card I used for the magazine subscription?

If Apple's business model depends on selling me the hardware and software and getting a kick back on all data passing through the device, too bad for them.

Re:Credit Card data?

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Just because you can't work at home doesn't mean you have to wear pants.

Re:Credit Card data?

[hymie!]

Consumer Reports is non-profit on purpose.

Re:Credit Card data?

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

Well Apple already has all of that data, so to get anti-corporation about your personal data is a little silly.

If I want $PUBLISHER to have my personal data, then I will buy directly from $PUBLISHER. If they're going to misuse my personal data to generate additional profits, then they can go fuck themselves. I think Apple's doing the right thing.

Re:Credit Card data?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why went droid, google is the best advertiser, they make sure companies get access to my data

Good for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

I cancelled my subscriptions to Make Magazine and Utne Reader for exactly that reason - the asshats couldn't stop themselves from selling my personal data to advertisers. Within two months, I was getting both paper and email spam from all over the place because of them. I know it was them because I always use custom email addresses and custom misspellings of my name to track how companies use my data.

bummer

[bigmo]

I feel so dirty when I agree with Steve Jobs.

Re:Music Industry

[bluefoxlucid]

Yeah, they should totally sell your personal information for profit.

Re:My advice, don't develop for the iphone.

[Tharsman]

You heard the man! If you don't like Apple protecting user data, go to a platform that does not!

Deal with the devil

[Solandri]

The publishing industry, being the sole supplier of many popular magazines and newspapers, refused to release those magazines and newspapers in ebook format until a hardware manufacturer agreed to all their onerous DRM requirements. Apple was the only one who took them up on the offer, and the iPad was the result. Now they're finding out some of the problems that come with having to deal with a sole supplier (in this case, for the hardware platform on which your electronic publications are distributed). Serves them right I say. Pot, meet kettle.

dead due to cost

[fermion]

To me the subscription model is dead due to cost and quality. I have one subscription through an app on the iOS, and that is pretty much a donation sort of thing. I would not mind having a subscription to a Linux magazine, but they want a huge amount of money. Ditto for Financial Times, WSJ, and most other subscriptions.

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.